By G Mohan

In time for the festive season in India, many car companies have announced the launch of new car models. Honda has launched Brio, Mahindra has launched an SUV, XUV 500 and Hyundai will soon launch its mini-hatchback Eon. I am sure many more launches are in the offing.

In a country, where for decades we just saw two major car manufacturers offering two models, Ambassador and Fiat (later called Premier Padmini), the choice of cars available today is mouth-watering. Even after Maruti came, the single model Maruti 800 was the aspirational car for middle-class Indians for many years. Circa 2011, there are over 20 manufacturers/importers of cars in India. The number of models and variants available in the market is over 500.

Perhaps, no other country in the world today has as many car companies as India. All the leading car manufacturers of the world are in India. The US car majors, GM and Ford have been in India for over a decade now. The Japanese leaders, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan and not to forget Suzuki. European car leaders right from Volkswagen, Fiat, Renault, Mercedes, BMW are all here. The lone Korean company Hyundai is pretty big in India. Besides these we have our own homegrown Indian companies, Tata Motors and Mahindra. Today a car buyer is spoilt for choice. At the bottom of the pack is Tata Nano retailing at about Rs 1.5 lakhs and on the luxury end, a Bugatti Veyron costs Rs 16 crore only. At every price point, there are many choices available, particularly in the small car segment.

The reason why every world car major is eyeing a slice of the Indian pie is not hard to figure out. At a time when the car market in the developed world is either stagnant or shrinking, India is one of the fastest growing markets. The world leaders are shutting down plants in the developed countries, laying off workers and shifting their focus to China, India and other emerging markets. Sales of passenger vehicles in India in the year 2010-11 was 2.5 million vehicles. This was nearly 30 % over the 2009-10 sales of 1.9 million vehicles. The Society of Indian Automobile manufacturers (SIAM) expect Indian market to become 5 million vehicles by 2015 and 9 million vehicles by 2020.

Excellent, so far. The buyers are happy, thanks to the choices available. The sellers are happy, because the market is growing. The government is happy, because more car sales, means more taxes. Economists are happy, reasoning that automobile industry is an engine for growth.

But where are the roads? All the fancy models will be run and parked in the same roads. Indian cities have one of the lowest percentage of city surface covered by roads at 16.1 %. Save Delhi which is at 21 %, almost all the metros are below the national average. The US average for all cities over  million population is 28 %.

Already we see traffic snarls in all cities. Bumper-to-bumper traffic during peak hours is a common sight in every city. A 10 km ride to the airport can take over an hour in most metros. Even if you reach your destination on time, where will you park your beauty. Parking infrastructure in most places is woefully inadequate.

Besides the loss in time, the traffic snarls are causing very high levels of vehicular pollution in the cities. Also, India loses more than 100,000 lives every year due to road accidents.

The municipal authorities’ solution to the scarcity of road is typically a mix of road widening, one-way traffic and that all-time favourite, flyovers. These solutions have limited effect and very soon the population of vehicles grows to occupy the new space created. When the mess becomes too big, they announce a metro rail project. This project takes years to come up.

The way urban transport has developed in India is unsuitable for India. The urban transport policy ought to have focussed on public transport much more than private transport. Indian cities just do not have enough roads for so many private vehicles to ply.