Is equity sustainable?

The next time I hear the word ‘equity’ I am going to take it with a pinch of salt especially after what Ratan Tata has done for ‘equity’ for the Indian.

The story goes that he was ensconced in his nice AC car well protected from the vagaries of the weather when he happened to pass a family on a scooter – soaked – bearing the brunt of the rains. His heart immediately reached out to them with a thought ‘a would car protect them from the rain’ and there and then he resolved to build a car that would be affordable by ahem those who are, as some would have it. ‘less affluent’.

Now this Johnny be good could have thought some of the following thoughts

1. Hmmm! I have a vehicle manufacturing unit, I wonder how much do my vehicles contribute to carbon emissions?
2. Hmm! My companies proudly trumpet their CSR, why don’t I donate buses to cities to improve public transportation.
3. Hmm! I wonder why there are so many vehicles on the road and what can I do about it?

But no the ‘great one’ made a promise to himself that he would create a peoples car (a term coined for the Maruti 800). And when he unveiled the car he loudly proclaimed ‘a promise is a promise’. He is being equated to Henry Ford because he, in a way, like Ford did to America is putting India on wheels. Unfortunately the comparison rings hollow - Ford was a true pioneer because he initially used hemp for his car, Ford was a pioneer because he bettered the assembly line which was being used in the meat packing industry to enhance car production, Ford was a pioneer because he built a car that had to deal with almost no roads. But today things are different. The criteria to equate Tata to Ford would be if Tata were to create a cheap solar powered car or if he were to improve the public transport system or if created a car that was a cradle-to-grave product or manufactured out of recycled material.

If at all Ratan Tata goes down in history it is because he has made the idea of ‘equity’ unsustainable.

It is truly surprising that the person every one believes is one of India’s astute businessmen (with a conscience at that) is myopic enough to select a ‘cheap car’ as a solution for a lack of protection and mobility.

His attempt to bring equity was through the ‘consumption route’. He has provided a car that is cheap (not actually if one considers the subsidies he has been gifted) and therefore those who were not able to purchase car can now do so, I don’t use the term ‘afford’ because their income remains the same.

So where the problem is actually of transportation he provides a solution of choice. This means that more people will be able to buy things which they actually would not need if they were provided with a suitable alternative. The idea of increasing ones consumption as a process of equity is nothing new it was earlier called ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. But now there is need for morality and the facade of conscience because at the end of the day it is just another business proposition which leaves the world a little more uninhabitable.

All debate about the Nano and its possible deleterious effects are cut short with questions ‘how can you deny people their right to buy a car?’. Tata rides the high horse of giving those who did not have a chance to own a car to now own one, he wears the bullet and barb proof jacket of the Nano enhancing equity because those without a car (a sure sign of inequity) can get one.

This short sighted view of how the problem of inequity should be solved is not very good for sustainability, for one more resources are going to be used and more energy will be required to produce and to run it and its production is going to generate waste not only in the factory but in the mining of resources required for it.

Phew! This is just the beginning, then there is the question of durability - not only of the parts but also of the car itself. And no matter how fuel efficient the car there will still be carbon emissions.

If equity was his concern (as he claims it to be) then he could have

1. Paid the real cost for the land in Singur
2. Made transportation accessible to all.

-for a start

There will be those who say that there are other companies who are doing the same thing – producing, polluting and providing cheap things thereby making it accessible to everyone – so what is Tata doing wrong. There is no denying this and such companies make no bones about it being a good business proposition. The fact of the matter is Ratan Tata is at heart a businessman who had a brilliant idea - no not of a cheap car but of wrapping the car in the cloak of ‘equity’.

It frightens me to think of what he will think of as a solution when he sees the plight of the uneducated, the hungry, the sick and the unemployed.

How much is enough?

The good news from India is not only that those with 10 houses (cars and planes for that matter) now have twenty, but these achievements make the headlines. This could mean many things - they are an indicator of how well the economy is doing, that there is no other news worth reporting, that these players are becoming the ‘who’s who’ in the world map, that they want to do more things with money other than accumulate it (never share it though), that the only criteria for success is the number zeroes to a name, that the media thinks they are the next role models or they a more interesting economic index than the Nifty 50 and other such indices.

They may not all be true, but they are all making the transition to becoming truths and relevant today. A friend of mine tells me about this 24 year old who wants to own a Maybach by the age of thirty. There is a growing belief that the degree of success is directly proportional to the ability to flaunt it. Sure, as children success was guaranteed to get a prize, a mention in the roll call, or a gift from the parents, the size of the prize did not matter, what was of consequence was a new standard was recognized.

Does this point to a lack of imagination of the current work force? For everyone to choose and even recognize the same criteria for success points to either a society getting dumb (okay numb) or society taking the simplest way out (success is valid only if it can be economically measured and therefore recognizable and if others aspire to it). So we have advertisements that hark on success in terms of a big car, a big house or reports such as those mentioned. Take for example the stories that ran when Tendulkar got a Ferrari- papers made it out to be that one world champion was recognizing another, but the fact of the matter was that Schumacher had very little idea of cricket and for that matter Tendulkar. But there wasn’t a peep when Tendulkar refused to pay customs duty on the car, the government had to acquiesce and allow the car to come in without any duty – which means that Indians lost out on money that would have benefited them – in some ways the car belongs to every Indian and therefore it wouldn’t be a crime if each one of us went put a little dent into the car. But the point is because we Indians thought that getting a car as a gift was evidence of this mans success he was allowed to make demands on the government that actually should have put him and everyone else to shame.

But getting back to our lack of imagination in defining success, it has consequences in just about everything we do. Take for example the case of Medha Patekar does society consider her and her achievements as a success. How many parents would want their children to emulate her? How many parents would state proudly that their children work for her organization, or for that matter how many youth would work for her cause? Now take the case of the Ambani brothers and get the same questions answered. It has become so bad that Pogo, a children’s TV channel, asks children to choose actors and their movies for awards – both which have no relation to children, and then the likes of MTV Youth Icon awards have nominees like Orkut, a Rang De Basanti (a movie) and the only human Abhishek Bachan in their list of nominees – Orkut won, the previous awardees included Anil Ambani (a businessman), Shah Rukh Khan (an actor), Rahul Dravid and Dhoni (cricketers).

And recently there were headlines around India about the billion dollars spent by a few mega rich Indians to buy cricket teams in cities around India. The Indian Premier League created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is truly a defining moment in Indian history – never has so much money been spent by so few Indians on so few Indians. No body has questioned the need for the BCCI to create another league when there are already cricket leagues. Nobody has questioned the appropriateness for these few people to spend so much money on a group of players who are already extremely well off.

Nobody does it because everybody wants to emulate this form of success. There does not seem to be a price that one has to pay when one is so rich.

It is not good enough that these people are feted when they pay taxes – the reason they can pay so much in tax is because there are others who are not earning an income, because there are others who sleep in slums, because there are others who cannot afford to send their children to school.

Fortune and fame go hand in hand and maybe the Indian government should provide other avenues for these fortunate ones to add to their fame. These rich should spend a certain percentage of their money on the public good and they can name the roads, the free schools and hospitals they build after themselves. This for one would ensure that these things would never go into decay because the egos of the rich would ensure that their names were not associated with anything moribund, more importantly because this would truly make India a country which is built on the foundations of equity, justice and equality.

Small towns and a little bit of fish

When fellow Indians ask me where I am from, I say Nagpur and then to make things interesting I say that it is in the very centre of India and that all North-South and East-West trains pass through this city. Impressed, they ask me a little more about it and I speak about the two flyovers we have and the 3 malls and I end with ‘Nagpur is a small town with big city dreams’.

All small towns and their people have that ambition; it can be seen noticed in a variety of ways. I was in Orissa recently and observed some of the ways these places attempt to make their dreams reality.

The use of English in advertisement boards and the type of food sold are two of the most visible ways. A food stall built over a hand cart has boldly writ ‘Indian Chart’ over it. One is not sure whether the entrepreneur’s intention was to point out the engineering innovations and wanted to write ‘Indian Cart’ or was intending to advertise the cuisine served -‘Indian Chaat’ or was just showing his route to success. The presence of a food outlet serving Chinese (or what goes as Chinese) surrounded by others that serve the local cuisine is a pointer to where the town is heading. The place I saw had the necessary accoutrements that indicated the food served – a big wok, large bottles of soy sauce, chilli sauce, tomato sauce and a mound of boiled noodles.

I spent time on a fishing trawler, fishermen are known to be good cooks and I was looking forward to some good fish curry and rice. We passed a variety of fishing boats as we headed into sea. Our progress into bluer water coincided with the progress the cook was making in the kitchen. There were constant updates from the kitchen – the breeze brought us information of the oil being heated, the aroma of freshly frying onions hit us next, the addition of turmeric and red chilli powder was duly announced - we followed every addition to the evolving curry with our noses. These aromas were interspersed with offerings of freshly fried fish that the kitchen would send over.

These offerings resulted in the a paucity of fish for the curry – so the captain took matters into his hands and radioed other trawlers and asked them if they had any fresh fish – soon we had trawlers stopping for us with fish that we bought.

So at around 3 pm we finally got to eat what our noses were telling us about – it was delicious.

Coming Back

One of my colleagues played Ozzie Osborne’s ‘Mama I am coming home’ when I told them I was going home for the holidays. I am not sure if the lyrics reflect this simple journey but it seemed to be a momentous occasion.

There is an innate sense of anticipation on the journey home, an eagerness that has got to do with a sense of familiarity that encompasses known faces, familiar terrain and other things that act as happy leitmotifs.

However, there is a stage in life when these leitmotifs get to become a little more sober. It does seem that the time gap between two home comings shrink and it was just yesterday that one was making the same journey. But the vast sweep of impact, of that time, on peoples life’s is breathtaking it gets personal – more grey hair, more spines that are bent, more sickness related to age, memories of once lively and healthy people created by their current debilitating bedridden state. A general question about somebody gets the overtone of whether the person is alive or is on the way out.

This is what struck me when I got back home. However there also was this scent of freshness from the youngsters who I saw last as babies, of youngsters who are now parents with children of their own.

The shoes remain the same but there is a production line of people who fill them over time and I am part of that production line.