Jun

20

Fast, industrious and innovative

June 20, 2009 posted by indiatime |

With a week, back to back, yet another new car gets introduced to the Indian market. Last week it was Honda Jazz. This week it is Fiat’s Grande Punto. The automobile market, already overflowing the infrastructural restraints, is about to explode even more within the next few years, as India is seen as an especially big and emerging market for cars.

But much more exciting than that, is a story about student hobbyists in India, designing and building new cars. All over India, small groups of students from local engineering colleges seem to be getting into the act. RV College of Engineering in Bangalore, MM college of Engineering in Ambala, Amity College of Engineering in Delhi, have recently produced students who have designed, produced and built model cars that could almost be considered roadworthy. Almost.

Earlier this year, Sramana Mitra wrote in the Forbes about the ‘big change’ in the Indian mindset whereby ’secure servitude’ in working with the government was replaced by the newly growing outsourcing servitude, stemming the tide of Indian innovation in the bud. A few years ago, in a series of detailed articles, Arindam Banerji wrote about India’s innovation hopes and obstacles, outlining the disruptive ways innovation happens or doesn’t in India.

One good thing about the car designing hobbyists is that it doesn’t take much to keep a young student interested in designing cars. It’s much, much harder to keep the students interested in some basic research that can cure a disease a hundred years later or work on something that has no immediate rewards or satisfactions. And although so far the only reward seems to be a good job offer at some automotive company, a little extra effort and a little extra mile can probably go a long way for some of these folks who are venturing out of the ordinary rigors of education.

It used to be that one would have to be a prime minister’s or an industrialist’s son to launch a car company in India. Not any more, hopefully.


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