Tatas to build world's cheapest home for Euro 500
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
The Indian government need to get their act together and not leave it up to the private companies to clean up the mess in India. I have spent time in Delhi and what I have seen is shocking. Private companies run taxi services for their workers because it is so unsafe and the government run services are so unreliable that they are left with no other option.
The major commercial districts are built with private money and thus you see great big modern buildings with dusty and potholed roads without any paths connecting them so stepping outside the campus of these buildings you go from 1st world to 3rd world in a matter of a few steps.
There is more to making someones life livable than simply constructing four walls with a roof and some windows. You need to implement proper sanitation and other fundamental facilities such as appropriate policing and transportation. without these you are just fueling the growth of these slums and the internal migration from the countryside into the cities.
I can see India with an incredible future and rapid growth if simply the corruption and mismanagement is sorted out in the government sector.
Yes there is a government subsidy for the lowest cost home but in India relying on the government keeping the same policy for more than 4 years is a little insane.
And since other companies have failed at this, I still think it's very entrepreneurial and ballsy to attack this problem.
In the end, it behaved as you might expect. The rank changed rapidly in the last hours as people motivated their social networks. Also, designs with the prettiest pictures dominated and several were hopelessly over budget.
On the other hand, there were a number of really interesting designs. It's worthwhile to read through the submissions if you are interested in inexpensive housing.
Kudos to them for tackling India's problems.
For those unfamiliar the Tata industry is better compared to GE than Google in terms of its diversification. They are involved in the energy, IT, automotive, steel, and I'm sure a whole bunch of other sectors.
It's unfortunate that I see similar behavior for all stratas of upper and upper-middle class. In my community it's almost a norm to spend at least half a million for the whole wedding affair. Weddings offer a dozen or so cuisine or sub cuisine types, and in some cases I have seen fireworks as elaborate as some 4th of July celebrations. It's even more unfortunate that we as a society do not have any type of popular counter-culture or even a counter point. It's all a blind race to the moral bottom. Sorry for going a bit off topic.
Relatedly, this is a big difference between India and China. In China, when the CPC decides to do something, it happens, no matter how many heads roll in the process. One of India's biggest failures has been its inability to keep up with its promises.
This is more of Tatas attempt to fix things, but unlike Nano Car project, govt. does have some involvement here, so I am not holding my breadth.
And yeah like it or not, it is good that Govt stops if something is not popular. Thank god for that.
Remember, in China developments happen with more government participation whereas in India developments happen with lesser government participation.
I visited some houses in Costa Rica that were cinder block structures with corrugated roofs and wide bars for windows (to prevent thieves but not geckos) and these were very comfortable. Materials and construction costs couldn't have amounted to much.
Sadly, 'heads rolling' is closer to the truth than you probably meant. Human rights abuses of workers working on state-sponsored public-facing projects is common. :/
The reason why Japan (and Taiwan and South Korea, to a lesser extent) was able to modernize at a similar rate from ~1950-1990 was because of its ethnic and cultural homogeneity. They technically have a democracy, but everyone is so alike that, in practice, the same political party (the LDP) stayed in power for that entire period. There is no way in hell that a similar situation could occur in China.
China's modernization has no doubt come at a terrible price, albeit one that Americans, as a democratic and (supposedly) just country, are able to ignore thanks to our ability to collectively ignore the cognitive dissonance.
You say that, but China's government is in some ways no better than India's. Take a look at the high profile, recently opened Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway - which has already had several power malfunctions in the last two weeks. [1] The CPC has its own corruption and problems as well - they're just not as obvious as India's.
[1] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iYyU6_FOL0...
eg http://www.rei.com/product/779454/mountain-hardwear-trango-4...
The U.S. building code seems broken from my perspective. Cheap homes are not hard.
The house had 2000 ft of CAT-5 in it, about 1000 ft of co-ax.
As a side note, does anyone have links to images of what the completed homes look like?
This equation holds true in the US, and should hold true in India. The reason for US subsidies is that sometimes, the right side of the equation is still negative because the value to the end user is so low (think section 8 where tenants only have $500/month or less to rent housing, feed their family etc.)
Building a $500 house will only be beneficial to people if the right side of the equation has a value less than 0. If the value of the right hand side of the equation is greater than 0 then the land value simply goes up.
The Nano stigma you talk about was the average car buyer looking at it and thinking, "That is a terrible car." Wrong audience. But I can understand why they did it though. As a car manufacturer trying out new things, their marketing did tend to see it as a "car market" problem -- hammer, meet nail.
Housing on the other hand is a "life necessity." If the houses Tata is promising are able to deliver on quality, security, repairabilty, and temperature issues, you might have a winner. It will also have to withstand the endless jugaads people are going to subject it to in cramped urban spaces.
On the other hand despite Tata's tall claims, it's difficult to see their marketing team do much about it. I don't see Tata Swach ubiquitously in shops here, nor do they respond to inquiries about their solar cells (I tried). Beyond the brochures and the websites, it's difficult to get Tata to respond to you. This makes most of these announcements pointless.
As an Indian, all I feel is further dejection and the hopelessness of dealing with a bunch of lotus eaters with press releases trying to solve problems of an audience they do not understand.
For a country like India, what the Tatas are doing is simply commendable. They are trying to step in and solve some fundamental problems here and I would like to see them succeed -- if the governments and babus will allow them to.
Why, exactly?
- NO airbags
- NO passenger-side wing mirror
- NO crumple zone
- Front brake: 180 mm drum (drum brakes at the front... WTF???)
- Rear brake: 180 mm drum
- With kerb weight of 600kg and power output of 26 kW it will go reasonably fast with one person inside, but will be completely undrivable with 4 people inside. How do you overtake in this case? And being able to overtake IS a safety feature!
- The Nano's trunk is only accessible from inside the car, as the rear hatch does not open.
- Three lug nuts on the wheels instead of the usual four
SO one of the main concerns is the safety. I would not want any of my close people driving in this box of wheels, without basic safety features. Several tests in Europe showed pretty good results (not Euro NCAP though), but this is the European version, that costs around $6000. My main point is that for this money you can buy a much better 5-6 years old car, which will be much safer and much better to drive and live with.