A ‘People’s Car’ Without a People? Mobility, Aspirations and Status in ‘New India’

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter analyses the trajectory of the Indian small car, the Tata Nano. When launched by the manufacturer Tata Motors as a new Indian ‘people’s car’ in 2008, the Nano was widely predicted to revolutionise automobility in India. Yet it barely made an impact on the Indian car market, and production was phased out just a decade after the first Nano had hit the Indian roads. By analysing the changing popular representations and symbolic imaginaries that attach to the car as a means to mobility and an object of identity and social status, we argue that the Nano failed neither because it was mediocre, nor because it remained economically out of reach for most Indians. Rather, its insertion into the lower ranks of a powerful status hierarchy of identity-defining objects precluded it from adequately tapping into new and hegemonic forms of middle-class consumer aspiration in ‘New India’, thereby leaving the people’s car without ‘a people’.