[Business Today]

Published date: 29th Sep 2013

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and It is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there. so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 meditation on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was part of the early stirrings of true biking in India. Much has changed over the past forty years from the Yezdis made by Ideal Jawa (remember them?) to the Escorts Rajdoots, to the 350 cc Bullets beloved of the sturdy Sikh farmer. Today millions of Indians are getting wheels, clambering on their shiny new motorcycles. And so are Nigerians, Ethiopians. Ecuadorians. Guatemalans, Filipinos and Bangladeshis. Very likely, they are roaring off on a motorcycle made by Bajaj Auto, on a machine that was made after Rajiv Bajaj pulled the plug on the scooter assembly lines in Pune in 2010 in defiance of his father Rahul. It was an audacious change of product and strategy that will doubtless one day be a case study at Harvard Business School. Unlike his male relatives, Rajiv did not go to HBS. He has bucked more than one trend in his restless quest for the No.1 spot in India. That spot has eluded him so far, but Bajaj is now the largest motorcycle exporter in the country. spreading like a pool of motor oil across the world’s map.

At Business Today we have chronicled the interesting changes taking place in India’s two-wheeler and car industries, especially as the country moves to comply with tougher European emission norms. India now makes motorcycles that are indisputably world-class. Rajiv Bajaj is not an easy man to write about. He is both rounded and angular, rooted in his yoga and homeopathy while he is ever willing to poke a sharp elbow in the ribs of his competitors. His rivals have scrambled to thwart the imminent launch of his “quadricycle”, the RE60, which will gentrify lower-cost urban transportation on crowded roads that only Bajaj three-wheelers could so far negotiate. Executive Editor Suveen Kumar Sinha spent months tracking the 46-year-old and his top team, travelling to Pune for an unprecedented look at the RE60. Commercial production has not begun yet, but Sinha took a test ride in the intriguing prototype pictured on our cover, which has a steering wheel, four doors, a hard roof, a music system, can seat five in a squeeze, and “feels like a really nice autorickshaw”. Read all about it starting from page 42.

This issue of the magazine is again replete with several excellent stories and you will, as usual, find it a very good buy. I hope you have noticed the archival references we bring into our stories-if you follow the links you will get to read earlier reports on the same company or subject. As an example go to page 28, where Associate Editor Suprotip Ghosh describes the troubles of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infrastructure with Mumbai Metro One. They are symptomatic of the quagmire that PPP (public-private partnership) projects tend to sink into; they echo Reliance Infra’s disastrous engagement with Delhi’s Airport Metro.

At least the Mumbai Metro has got off the ground. The number of big-ticket projects that are stillborn is legion, and a sign of the catatonic state of our economy. Raghuram Rajan, who took over in early September as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has accepted a poisoned chalice from Duvvuri Subbarao. Senior Editor Anand Adhikari examines the “Subba” legacy and Rajan’s task on page 40. Write to me if you find cause for optimism!