India's scooter era victim of affluence

Buying first Bajaj became rite of passage and reason for celebration among families

Jan 26, 2010

Comments on this story (2)

Special to the Star

New Delhi–Math tutor Anu Tiwari still remembers the dowry she took to her husband's home 12 years ago: saris, gold jewelry, kitchenware, a bed and a fridge.

But the piéce de resistance was the Bajaj Auto scooter that her father proudly unveiled at her in-laws' home.

"The children in the family all came running to see it and we photographed them with it. For the first year, we kept it inside the house, covered by some burlap, because we were worried that someone could steal it," said Tiwari, who now drives a Hyundai Santro, a mini subcompact going for around $6,000 (Canadian).

For years, Tiwari, her husband and two children rode everywhere in the Indian capital on their scooter, along with millions of other middle-class Indians.

This image – a Bajaj scooter at the traffic lights with Dad, in a polyester safari suit in front, Mum riding pillion, one child standing up in front of Dad and the other child squeezed between the parents – captured the essence of middle-class India.

The Bajaj scooter, humble and modest, mirrored the lifestyle of the middle class during the 1970s and '80s in the days of state socialism marked by shortages of everything.

For the middle class, living such a frugal lifestyle that even buying a fridge occasioned family summits where the decision was discussed with the solemnity of a Security Council debate, buying a scooter was a fantasy.

It meant mobility. It made shopping, getting to work, dropping children off at school and visiting relatives easy. Moreover, its price was, with some tightening of belts, just about within reach.

But in a watershed decision that symbolizes how much economic prosperity has changed India, Bajaj is to stop manufacturing scooters in March.

Demand has collapsed, as Indians shun the scooter, preferring sleeker, more muscular and expensive motorbikes or cars.

A wave of melancholic nostalgia swept across the country at the decision, with editorials lamenting the "passing not only of an era but of a consciousness".

"It needed to be kicked, it needed to be tilted at an impossible angle for the fuel to start flowing and its spark plugs needed more cleaning than Indian politics, but it blended in perfectly with how we lived – restrained, repressed, modest, versatile...," Santosh Desai, a marketing and advertising expert, wrote in The Business Standard newspaper.

In the scooter's heyday, Indians waited years to own the popular model, the Chetak, once the best-selling scooter in the world. People were prepared to pay a premium equal to the original cost to get a Chetak.

In 1995, Bajaj rolled out its 10 millionth vehicle. It sold 1 million scooters in a year.

With the advent of India's economic boom in the mid-1990s, however, the lifestyle of the middle class changed beyond recognition. With money to spend for the first time in decades, the old austerity vanished, replaced by a new culture of consumerism.

Bajaj Auto was one of the victims of the new prosperity. Between 1999 and 2009, the share of scooters in Bajaj's overall sales fell from 65.23 per cent to just 0.31 per cent.

In 2000, for the first time, Bajaj lost its No. 1 position to Hero Honda, which still retains the top slot.

The once legendary manufacturer, one of the largest in the scooter business worldwide, discontinued the Chetak four years ago.

Now the Chetak's successor, the Kristal, will roll off the assembly line into the sunset in March.

The mismatch between the old-fashioned scooter and the new consumerism can be seen in car sales. Despite the recession, car sales in India last November rose by a record 63 per cent from November 2008 – the biggest year-over-year surge since 2004.

The collapse in demand has forced Bajaj to make a strategic shift to focusing exclusively on motorcycles, a move led by managing director Rajiv Bajaj who took over from his flamboyant father, Rahul, at exactly the time that Bajaj was slipping.

Rajiv Bajaj has staked the company's future on motorbikes. "Scooters don't give the volumes or the profits. We want to become the largest producer of motorcycles in the world. To achieve this, sadly, we had to sacrifice the scooter," he said.

Automotive expert Ranjan Ghosh explained the new trend. "Motorbikes are very popular in rural areas because they are more rugged and you get better mileage," he said.

Maybe. But New Delhi garment exporter Atul Banerji, who owns two cars, will never forget his first scooter.

"I got a Bajaj for our wedding. The next day we hung a garland of marigolds around it and took it to the temple to be blessed by the priest," he said.

Bank manager Neeraj Ghosh was dismayed at the news of the scooter's fall into pending oblivion.

"My Bajaj freed me from travelling on the buses. I polished it every day and had a special plastic cover made to protect it. It was a very special love affair."

Toronto Star