Güven Sak, PhD - [Archive]

You should not rent a car in India 19/10/2012 - Viewed 1912 times

Turkey is a country where you can rent a car; India is not. But there are interesting similarities between the two countries.

There are two types of countries in the world: those where you prefer to rent a car to travel around during a short visit and those where you wouldn’t even consider doing so. Turkey is in the first group, India is definitely in the second. If you ask me, no one should rent a car in India. Let me tell you why.

I am in India right now. But to be honest, I rather feel like I am in an Arab country. There are three reasons. First, Delhi really looks like a Muslim part of India. The second reason is that the traffic is a lot like that in Arab countries. A couple of months ago, I was hardly able to sleep in Alexandria because of the car horns. And Delhi is the same: the traffic has no order. Neither did that of Yemen’s capital Sana or Egypt’s capital Cairo. The only difference in India is that the country has a domestic car brand, the Tata. The third similarity is that on your very first day in town, you find yourself drinking tea and bargaining with a rug salesman, thanks to the Grand Bazaar and the hotel mafia. And old behavior, but still possible… There is no order in shopping in Delhi, either.

This is why I claim that no one should rent a car in India. For me, the wheel being on the left is an important factor to begin with. But the Arabic effect is stronger, I think. I attempted to rent a car in Tunisia fifteen years ago. When filling up the gas tank, I saw a liquid spreading underneath the car and wondered what it was. Then I realized that the gas tank was leaking. Actually I should have suspected when I asked the renter why the car did not have a rear-view window and when he replied, “you don’t need that in Tunisia.” But I had a dumb moment I guess. Anyway, in some countries, you should not rent a car for transportation due to both the chaotic traffic and weak institutional infrastructure.

Turkey is a country where you can rent a car; India is not. On the other hand, there are interesting similarities between the two countries. First, the quality of exports is the same. Also, both countries have been converging with developed countries. India is as much an industrial country as Turkey, concerning both quantity and quality. This is the first point to keep in mind.

The second striking point is the high number of shop and hotel staff. As labor is cheap, businesses employ more people. I felt the same also in Pakistan. Seeing these, I was increasingly convinced that Turkey now has to engage in global competition not with its cheap labor but with its skilled labor.

The third point is that the caste system is still going strong in India. One explanation I heard had to do with immigration per se and the need for solidarity among urban immigrants. Just like the case with immigration and the rising importance of communities in Turkey. Taking departure from this, let me ask you, for how long will these informal support mechanisms survive? I tend to believe that the variegation of life turns every other mechanism gray. I think that for a multifaceted framework of thinking about Turkey, it would be useful to examine the Indian case.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 19.10.2012