MOTORCYCLE REVOLUTIONS

My 3rd column in Business Standard Weekend.

“Those were the days my friend… we thought they would never end… “ crooned Mary Hopkins  way back in 1968. In those days smart young men had just graduated from big 4-stroke bikes that used to be imported like those of BSA, Triumph, Norton, BMW and even the American monsters like Harley Davidson and Indian Chief to little Lambaretta and Vespa scooters. The Lamby faded out and the Vespa evolved into the Bajaj that quickly became the mainstay for almost every Government babu. With the lumbering Ambassador and Fiat cars It ruled the Indian roads throughout the 70’s while the Rajdoot and Jawa motorcycles as well as the old Royal Enfield motorcycles trailed far behind. I began my motoring on a curious American 300 CC Allstate scooter and later graduated to a 500cc 4-stroke Jawa that I rescued from a junk heap.

In 1970 I joined Escorts Limited that used to make the 175 cc Rajdoot. By this time small Japanese bikes had revolutionized the global roads but none of the Japanese manufacturers were willing to part with their technologies. In 1977 Escorts persuaded Yamaha to sell their technology for the 2-stroke 350 cc Yamaha RD 350 motorcycle because they were phasing it out. The twin cylinder bike was one of the world’s fastest road bikes but way ahead of its time and was not a success even though it taught Escorts a great deal about Japanese engineering and systems. Escorts also discovered that to make this bike they had to also enter further technical collaborations with eight other Japanese companies for the manufacture of carburetors, clutch assemblies and even the spokes for the wheels.

2-stroke and 4-stroke

Conventional wisdom at the time had it that the 4-stroke technology was best for engines above 200 cc and that smaller bikes should use 2-stroke engines. In 1980 the Government decided to allow 100 cc motorcycles and issued licenses to four bike makers. Suzuki was first off the mark in collaboration with Kinetic Engineering in 1983. It did very well until Honda collaborated with a cycle maker Hero to introduce the 4-stroke 100 cc CD100 the following year. Critics claimed that it was too complicated for India’s after sales service but its extraordinary fuel efficiency, captured in their memorable slogan… “Fill it, Shut it, Forget it”, made it an instant hit.

The Yamaha RX100 next entered the market in 1985. Though 2-stroke it belted out a huge 11 bhp as compared to the 7.5 bhp of the Honda CD100. It got off to a slow start with its higher fuel consumption but gradually became the preferred bike for youngsters who wanted its phenomenal speed and performance. A year later Bajaj introduced Kawasaki’s KB100 that was not a great success because Honda had captured the space of buyers who wanted economy and Yamaha had the market among those who wanted performance.  

Hero Honda’s CD100 and successor bike models not only offered outstanding fuel efficiency with very adequate performance but soon proved to be very reliable as well. After that all 2-stroke engines came under a cloud with concerns about pollution and had to be phased out. Hero Honda therefore flourished despite growing competition from home grown 4-stroke bikes made by TVS and Bajaj and from Yamaha who were now an independent foreign company in India.

Bajaj parted company with their collaborator Piaggio who owned the Vespa brand and Piaggio formed a new collaboration with LML to continue with the making of their famous product. They both did well for a few years until they began to lose ground before the onslaught of so many good 100 cc motorcycles and both companies suddenly stopped scooter production. After Kinetic Suzuki tied up with TVS while Kinetic tied up with Mahindra & Mahindra after trying to battle it alone for several years. It was very difficult for small companies to survive in intensely competitive markets.

With a loosening of Government controls foreign companies were allowed to build or import their models. Suzuki motorcycles as a 100% foreign company then began to fill the gap making a range of scooters and were followed by scooters from Honda who had separated from Hero in 2011. The excellent scooters from this new company made them great hits and scooters began to revive and make inroads into the huge motorcycle market. Today scooters are growing fast and account for nearly 30% of India’s 2-wheeler sales. India is the world’s largest 2-wheeler market today after China with an annual sale of over 19 million units.  

Bigger bikes

All the bike and scooter companies broke out of the 100 cc restrictions of the past and bigger bikes and scooters began to be offered to Indian buyers. In the world of 2-wheelers the huge volume of small machines are mostly commuting vehicles in warm countries like India, China, South-East Asia and southern Europe. Big bikes, that often cost as much as a car, are mostly `boys toys’ for the rich and sporty of cooler climes. India had long been a market for commuting bikes and few Indian customers were interested in big machines. When the BMW 650 CC Funduro was launched in the late 90’s it had great difficulty selling 80 machines but there several sporty buyers today who are going for big bikes imported by Harley Davidson, Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki and Triumph despite the heavy customs duties they have to pay. There is nothing like a road of a big bike to stir the adrenalin and to catch the attention of all the pretty girls.

Almost forgotten in this hectic scramble was India’s first and most iconic motorcycle the Royal Enfield that began life as a World War II messenger machine. Madras Motors went into a collaboration with Enfield Cysles to make it in 1955 and production began a few years later. It was a rather sluggish 18 bhp 350 cc 4-stroke machine with a classic personality and distinctive `dhug… dhug… dhug” exhaust note. Its quality used to be questionable and many riders getting oil on their boots used to call it the `royal oilfield’. Sales used to be sluggish till 1990 when Eicher Motors took control of the company. Eicher retained the classic styling of the RE but completely revolutionized the production technology to quickly make it a very popular and sought after product that is offered with 500 bhp engines as well. It is available in eight models that include a low slung cruiser and has a long waiting list despite impressive sales growth.

BOX

Brijmohan Lall Munjal who died recently at the age of 92 was without doubt the doyen of India’s motorcycle industry. His company Hero Cycles made cycle parts and then cycles from 1954. He was impressively tall and his warm and genial personality must have charmed the heads of Honda Motor company who entered a joint venture to make the Hero Majestic moped that was followed by the Honda motorcycle in 1984. Honda and Hero were a very good partnership in which the products, manufacturing systems and marketing were guided according to Honda systems. Though the two companies parted ways in August 2011, the new company Hero MotoCorp continued the production and marketing disciplines to continue with impressive innovations and growth. 

IS INDIA A HOMOGENEOUS NATION...

...or is it still a land of many thousand tribes and cultures?

The huge network of railways and highways built over the past two centuries now connect almost all parts of India and persuade many to believe that India is one big homogeneous nation with only a few variations in languages, religions, races and customs. The ardent champions of Indian nationalism want everyone to believe that India is a country with one single cultural, linguistic, social and even religious identity. Though India has some dozen religions, and hundreds of religious sub cults within Hinduism itself, many Indian philosophers tried to promote the idea of a common golden thread of religious philosophy connecting all Indian cultures when they proposed the theory of “Unity in Diversity.”

Diana Eck’s book `India- a sacred geography’ details the impact of the nearly a hundred million pilgrims who travel every year to hundreds of holy places from the Himalayas to remote areas throughout India. There are Yatras (pilgrimages) to hundreds of Dhams (holy seats), Tirthas (river fords) and Melas (congregations) including many Sufi shrines. Many million Indians therefore have a physical experience of India’s varied geography and this huge mingling of numerous ethnic people speaking different languages share many religious ideas even if they often worship different gods. All these contribute to a uniquely colorful and generally very tolerant Indian identity.

Geography shapes history and India has for many centuries been a gigantic patchwork of numerous small fertile areas separated from each other by mountains, rivers and thick tiger infested forests that were distinct from each other like a thousand islands. In ancient Sanskrit texts they were sixteen Mahājanapadas or "great realms" that were the big oligarchic republics that had existed from the sixth to fourth centuries BC. Ancient Buddhist literature makes frequent references to these sixteen great republics. For every Mahajanapada there were numerous smaller Janapadas.These sixteen Mahajanapadas were:

Vriji (Assam),

Chedi (Nepal),

Anga (roughly the present day Bengal),

Koshala (East UP),

Magadha (Bihar),

Kashi (Varanasi),

Malla (Allahabad),

Vatsa (west UP),

Panchala (east Punjab),

Kuru (west Punjab),

Matsya West Rajasthan),

Surasena (south east Rajasthan),

Avanti (Madhya Pradesh near Ujjain),

Gandhara (north west Punjab near Taxila),

Kambhoja (Kabul)

Assaka, a Deccan area south east of Hyderabad.

Assaka was the only kingdom south of the Vindhya Mountains that suggests that most of south India was still unknown to the composers of the ancient texts. Many other kingdoms must have also flourished in ancient India unknown to the Vedic or Buddhist scribes of this early period.

The texts of the Mahabharat, Ramayana and many other Hindu and Buddhist texts describe how each little tribal kingdom was separated from others by thick forests, rivers and hills. Each of these gradually developed their own cultures with distinctive dialects, objects of worship and customs. As in tribal societies in other lands they had strong family bonds that kept them united and their tribal councils would attend to disputes and injustices. The punishment for any individual who defied tribal customs was to banish them from the tribe cutting off their identities making it very difficult to survive among other tribes that would usually not accept them, feed them or allow them to marry their girls. At later times when Brahminism dominated their religious and social life most of these tribes were grouped into a number of castes that too used excommunication as one of the main methods of making their members conform to their rules.

Anthropologists have considerable evidence to show that all human beings evolved from ape like hominids like Australopithecus who once inhabited the Olduvai Gorge in the Rift Valley of southern Africa about three million years ago. They probably moved on to south east Asia and many centuries later crossed over the ice bridges to populate Australia and America during the last Ice Age. Science can also trace human evolution from the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in studies of populations from all over the world. According to SIL International’s “Ethnologue report for Language Isolate 2007” India has more than two thousand ethnic groups. The Anthropological Survey of India estimates that India has 4,635 communities. The DNA of aboriginal tribes of the Andaman Islands is similar to the Australian aborigines.

The DNA of different Indian races show that all the main ancient ethnic groups like the descendents of Proto-Austroloids continue to inhabit most areas of south and central India, Negroids the south west, Mongoloid tribes the north east and Dravidians the south east areas. Dravidians probably originally came from west Asia and were later pushed south by a series of Caucasoid people like the Aryas, Greeks, Kushans, Parthians, Sakas, Jats and others who migrated from the steppes of central Asia. Later the Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Afghans, Chinese and European races all added to India’s brimming melting pot.

Many people wrongly consider Negroid, Australoid, or Mongoloid ethnic characteristics as being inferior to the Caucasoid types but few people know that any such inferiority is only through cultural evolution and not from any intellectual limitations. The Chinese, Japanese and Mongolian people are mostly mongoloid but have evolved distinctly different racial identities. The Innuits or Eskimos are of the same basic mongoloid racial stock but have suffered cultural degradation for hundreds of generations making them so focused on survival in an extremely difficult environment that their cultural horizons were naturally constrained. Other tribal people like the aboriginals of Australia, Andamans and the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been similarly affected.

People of any ethnic background can be as successful as any other. Children even from the most impoverished low caste families have often been very successful when given the opportunities of good education and social support. The success of Europeans and Americans during the past four hundred years and the impact of Hollywood movies made Caucasian features admired. Barak Obama, as president of USA, has single-handedly done more to demolish the idea of `White Supremacy’ than any other person or scientific discovery.

The Nazi myth of an Aryan super race was as much a fiction as the Aryan myth of Brahmin belief. The spurious idea of keeping pure Aryan blood from becoming contaminated by the blood of inferior races was to cause millions of deaths and unbelievable suffering. The refrence to Varna or skin colour in the Rig-veda was to cause great social injury for millions of people in India over the centuries. The division into four social classes only appears in two sklokas of the late Rigvedic Purusha Sukta  (RV 10.90. 11-12), which has the Brahman, Rajanya (not Kshatriya), Vaishya and Shudra classes emerging from the mouth, arms, thighs and feet of the primordial giant, Purusha. In the post-Vedic period, this division is elaborated in the Dharmashastra literature and later in the Puranas and other texts.

As the early tribes gradually settled into a number of different game rich forests a huge number of local customs dialects, religions and traditions evolved independently isolated from others till some of them began to merge through conquests or trade. According to anthropological studies each tribal area would usually jealously guard its resources of food and game from greedy neighbors. As each tribe had their own deities and many of their deities continued to be worshipped even after their followers shifted part of their allegiance to the gods of the bigger tribes that ruled over them turn by turn. Conquered tribes accepted the gods of bigger tribes but the idea of an all powerful supreme god was to come much later. 

Ancient India must have therefore once been a patchwork of thousands of local customs and languages. The existence of 22 official languages and 1,635 dialects (according to the 2011 census) confirm India’s gigantic linguistic diversity that is a reflection of India’s huge diversity in ethnic, religious or other traditions as well. Ethnologue, a comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world’s known living languages, states that India has 454 living languages of which 447 are indigenous. The continuing vestiges of these early tribal roots are also evident from the many thousands of `gotras’, or lineages, that are part of India’s complicated caste system. Gotras were the lineages descended from a single ancient ancestor.

The Brahmins alone have the following main gotras: Agasthya, Ahabhunasa, Abnavana, Aliman, Angad, Angirasa, Akshinthala, Atreya, Atri, Badarayana,Barai, Bayan, Bachhasa, Bhalki, Bhargava, Bhaskar, Charora, Chaurasia, Chivukula, Chayavana, Dammiwal, Dadhichi, Dalabhya, Dhananjay, Dhanvantari, Galav, Gautam, Ghanara, Harita,  Haritash/ Haritsa, Jaabaali, Jaimini, Jamdagni, Kankar, Kankariya, Kanva, Kapila, Kapinjala, Kapisa, Karkata, Kashyapa, Kashav, Katyayana, Kaundilya, Kaudinya, Kaundrus, Kaushal, Kaushik, Kaushish, Krishnatrey, Kutsa, Kush, Lohitsya, Mandavya, Marichi, Markandeya, Maudgalya, Mudgal, Monash, Nagaich, Nanda, Paalavalli, Parashara, Pathak, Purugutsa, Ramanuja, Rikhi, Sakti, Salankayana, Sanatana, Sandilya, Sadanwalia, Sangar, Sankriti, Savarna, Shandilya, Shaunaka, Shiva, Shopauran Nagarwal, Soral, Srivatsa, Suryadhwaja, Tiwari, Upadyyay, Upamanyu, Upreti, Vadula, Vartantu, Vashishta, Vaishwanar, Vatashva, Vatsayan, Vishvamitra, Kamsi, Yaska, Vats and Vijaychan.

Brahmins account for only 5.6% of India’s population and there are many more lineages connected to Kshatriyas, Vaishyas as well as other castes that the Brahmins do not even wish to acknowledge.

After the forests were cleared for cultivation many tribes were assimilated into larger kingdoms people began to add the customs of the dominant rulers to their old ones. The tribes in every land had no standing armies though able bodied men would respond to attack by taking up clubs, spears and bows to indulge in the age old tribal pastime of mounting raids to steal cattle, women and treasures from their neighbors. They were however powerless against trained armies. The armies of the kingdoms that succeeded small tribes thrived on wars because soldiers had an insaitiable hunger for conquest and military glory.

Holding new territories was however difficult so most conquering rulers, in every country, would usually find it convenient reinstate the defeated rulers on their own thrones to be their vassals though they would be required to send tributes to their new sovereigns. Kautalya’s Arthashastra, written in the third century BC, details a complex political science for the management of these `Samantas’ or vassal kingdoms. Their priests provided a convenient ideology affirming divine sanction for this and other elaborate ceremonies like the royal coronation ceremony of Rajsuya Yagna as are recorded in numerous documents and land grants.

Tribal people readily accepted the new deities though they continued to worship their own ones. There was little conflict between their old ones and any new deity that claimed to offer them the boons of food or prosperity. After the 1st century AD a number of evangelical Aryan heroes came out of north India and passionately promoted their Vedic religion as they moved from north India to other areas. Local rulers were easily seduced by the many beautiful Brahmin rituals of royal consecration but they were not successful in eradicating the deep rooted earlier tribal beliefs so many local gods and goddesses continued to be revered along with the new Vedic deities. Over time the Brahmin priests had to accept many local customs. Today the unifying impact of mass media, television and cinema is creating a new homogenized monoculture and many local religious customs and practices are fading out along with many of their dialects and customs. 

Most of the debates and controversies concerning Hinduism today are fueled by a large number of predominantly Brahminised Hindus who want to promote Hinduism as a mono-culture and religion and dismiss the huge mass of local traditions as being irrelevant deviations to the themes that they so ardently believe in. Many believe that there is little to Hinduism outside the Vedas and no history except the fragments of history found in the voluminous Sanskrit texts. They believe that ancient India had a pristine pure ethnic and religious culture that was corrupted and polluted by foreign invaders. Actually these Brahmins had been quite tolerant to ethnic differences but not to the religions of Islam and Christianity that were evangelistic and intolerant.

Some Indians also claim that the boundaries of India should be extended far beyond the confines of the modern map of India to include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mynamar and several other countries. They are correct in believing that `Indian’ rulers had, at some time of the other, ruled over wider areas. They however forget that at other times these `Hindu’ empires also disappeared to become part of foreign kingdoms.

They also forget that Chandra Gupta Maurya was probably a Jain and that his grandson, the great king Ashok, had been Buddhist and that Buddhism been the most prevalent religion in most parts of India for almost a thousand years. They seldom know that the very word `Hindu’ is a foreign word given by the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great in the 6<sup>th</sup> century BC to the people of the Indus who were inhabitants of his 19<sup>th</sup> province. As the Persians could not pronounce `S’, the word Sindu became Hindu that was later made the name for a great religion.

BALENO AND S-CROSS SHARPEN MARUTI’S IMAGE

The second article for Business Standard Weekend

  

Maruti cars have ruled the Indian roads since 1984 and dominate the small and medium car segments but they had never been able to make a serious dent in the larger passenger vehicle segment. Apart from the public perception about Maruti’s small car image there is also a problem with their roughly 700 dealers who were so focused on small cars that they do not provide the classy ambience that big car customers expect. Maruti’s larger cars like the Kaisan, Baleno sedans, SX4 and Vitara SUV were all good cars but failed to make a sufficient impression. Maruti is now trying to change this with the launch of their S-Cross described as a premium crossover in a set of spanking new NEXA showrooms. The new S-Cross, Baleno and other models in the pipeline will be promoted by a set of hungry new dealers trained and staffed to handle premium car customers. It has been a demonstration of faith for the scores of dealers who had to invest small fortunes into building snazzy new showrooms and workshops for unknown new cars. Maruti plans to have 100 NEXA showrooms by the end of 2016.

It has been a very long journey since Maruti Udyog first introduced their little 800 cc Maruti 800 in 1983. This quick, reliable, fuel-efficient and easy to drive little car was like a breath of fresh air after the clunky Ambassadors and Padminis and quickly revolutionized the Indian auto market opening the way for a number of other modern cars. It’s phenomenal success however branded Maruti as a small car maker and the brand persona was not grand enough for many buyers looking for a premium image especially with premium saloons being offered by international companies like Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, Chevrolet, Fiat, Renault, Nissan and Volkswagen. A lack of premium image also affected Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra in their efforts to enter this auto segment. As a Public Sector company the Indian Government gave it such support that it’s phenomenal success raised Suzuki from a minor Japanese auto company to a major global player with India being the production base for the export of many small models.

Apart from numerous test drives I first got to really know the Maruti 800 when I drove my wife’s new car through the mountain tracks of Garhwal and Kumaon. The cute little car was quick and economical on the highways and surprisingly nimble on twisty and rough mountain roads. Being so light I was once even able to bodily lift it, with the help of a few locals, when it got seriously stuck. Maruti owners soon found that the car not only worked well but was easy and cheap to maintain with inexpensive spare parts at the many Maruti dealers. These features also appealed to scores of lady drivers who quickly became fixtures on Indian roads.

In July, Maruti let us drive their new S-Cross. Several `crossover’ cars had earlier successfully widened the market of India’s conventional car segments. 2 wheel drive `crossovers’ were not true SUV’s but SUV styling and bigger tires widened the customer appeal of several conventional hatchbacks and saloons. The Toyota Etios Cross was, for example, much more attractive than the `plain jane’ Etios Liva hatchback. The huge success of cars like the Renault Duster and Ford EcoSport made `crossovers’ very appealing especially for younger buyers and all the auto companies began adding bigger wheels and SUV trims to widen their customer appeal.

The sleek new Maruti S-Cross is roughly the size of a Honda City except for big 16- inch wheels that offer much better ground clearance and road grip. In looks it seems more like a luxury saloon than a SUV and is also provided with numerous luxury car features for excellent ride, comfort and entertainment. Like the Ciaz it has also opted for a curvaceous classic look rather than the angles and bumps that many competitors have preferred. It is also powered by two excellent new diesel engines of 1600 cc and 1248 cc capacity that belt out surprisingly peppy performance with exceptional fuel efficiency. The new platform also soaks up road noise and provides great stability at high speeds. It is not cheap but is great value. It may lack the SUV appearance of a Hyundai Creta but offers so much that there is already a waiting list of some 11,000 bookings.  

The S-Cross saloon will soon be joined by the Baleno hatchback that, at a lower price band, will appeal to a much bigger customer base. Actually, it is not really a hatchback but it’s sloping stretched sporty roof makes it look like one. It will compliment Maruti’s Swift Dezire that has become India’s top selling saloon but with more generous legroom and many very attractive features. No doubt these will make it cost more as well. We will soon know when the Baleno is formally launched near Divali.

I greatly enjoyed driving fire red Baleno last week around Jaipur. The first impression is naturally the appearance that also has the curvaceous lines of the S-Cross but with a very attractive front face. All car companies have tried to make their grilles distinctive but Maruti has succeeded with a fluid design that gives the impression of the bow wave of a motor boat. The Interiors are not only very attractive but surprisingly spacious for a car that has been squeezed in to measure less than 4 meters. It also follows the new engine philosophy of squeezing huge power and performance out of small engines. In addition to the conventional 5-speed gearbox the top petrol model offers an automatic CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) that makes city driving very relaxing.

On the road I was immediately impressed by the new platform that not only absorbs road noise and vibrations but is so rigid that the car feels very stable at high speeds over 140 kmph. On the twisty drive up to Jaigarh fort the car handled the curves without a squeak of complaint. The manual, voice activated or steering controlled entertainment and navigation system is brilliant and the dashboard display is a class apart. As in the S-Cross it also has reverse assistance with a rear camera to let you know what lies behind in day or night. The big backlit blue panels not only show speed and engine revs but every other parameter of fuel consumption, temperature, etc., in several different graphic styles. It is powered by 200 cc petrol and 1248 cc Diesel engines. Fuel efficiency and good air-conditioning is a given for any modern car so they are not matters that deserve comment.

Baleno bookings are now open and there seems to be such a rush for them that the NEXA dealers who may have earlier despaired must now be smiling.

Baleno specifications

Engines cc                             1197 (petrol)                          1246 (diesel)

HP /RPM                          84 (62 KW) @6000              74 (55KW) @4000

Max torque                             115@4000                            190 @2000

Transmission                         5 speed MT/ CVT                 5 MT

Price                                      Not announced yet