There was the years-long waiting list to buy it and the jealous stares
once you finally got it home. There was the pride of that first ride when,
weaving through the streets, you knew that you’d finally — finally! — made it
to the middle class.
Outwardly it was just a scooter, a spluttering two-stroke Indian-made
Bajaj with three gears. All too often, it came painted a sickly avocado-green.
But in a time of empty shops and a hobbled economy, it was success.
A scooter repair shop, in New Delhi, India.
“This was something big,” said Yash Tekwani, a well-to-do New Delhi
businessman who can still picture the day in the early 1970s when his father,
who ran a tobacco shop, drove home a blue Bajaj. In a working-class
neighborhood where most people had only bicycles, the neighbors turned out to
gawk. “It was a joyous occasion.”
The joy, though, is ending.
At the end of March, Bajaj’s last scooter factory rolled out its last
scooter, ending an era in India’s transition from dreary socialist behemoth
into a consumerist powerhouse. And those one-time icons of middle-class
achievement will be left to secondhand dealers and armies of sidewalk
mechanics.
Because in modern India, modest dependability just isn’t enough.
“People have more money to spend today,” said Pradeep Tyagi. He sells
used motorcycles in the New Delhi neighborhood of Karol Bagh, where dozens of
used-car and motorcycle dealers — and a handful of scooter shops — are jammed
into a few narrow lanes. “No one wants to spend that money on a scooter.”
Wander among the neighborhood’s tiny, dusty shops and it becomes clear
how India’s aspirations have changed.
Second hand scooter dealers Gulshan Marwah, left, with his son Neeraj Marwah at their shop, in New Delhi. “Bajaj can shut down,but I’ll still be selling them.”
Because while India still has desperate poverty — more than one-third
of the population lives on less than $1 per day — it has also become a nation
of fierce consumers, its buying habits nurtured by a growing economy, easier
loans and relentless advertising. In places like Karol Bagh, that means people
who once would have aspired to scooters now want motorcycles. And everyone
dreams of cars.
Just ask Maug Lal. On a recent morning, the 32-year-old garbage
collector was outside a Karol Bagh shop, staring longingly at a Honda
motorcycle. The bike was red, streaked with racing decals and only slightly
used.
He had come to look at scooters. Instead, he found himself among the
motorcycles. He couldn’t afford one — a low-end used model costs $350; a decent
used scooter costs less than half that — but he mumbled that eventually he
would be able to save up the money. It would only take four years.
Lal kept his fingers resting on the Honda as a friend spoke up for him.
“The motorcycle is a real man’s vehicle,” said Mohammed Tajuddin Khan. “When
you sit on it you look strong.”
It wasn’t always like this.
Thirty years ago, India’s economy was mired in central planning and
government regulations, back when foreign companies were largely frozen out of
the Indian market and only a handful of people could afford anything more than
a bicycle.
Enter the Bajaj family, owners of a business empire with roots in
cotton, steel mills and the beginnings of the scooter business.
Bajaj brought mobility to the Indian masses, making a clunky,
affordable machine that, with a little squeezing, could carry an entire family.
That image — dad driving with one child standing between his knees, while mom
rides behind him holding the baby — became emblematic of India’s slow move into
modernity.
It seemed like a miracle. And one where only the driver had to wear a
helmet.
At one point, the best-selling Bajaj model, the Chetak, was selling
100,000 units per month. The waiting list could last a decade and desperate
buyers would pay huge premiums above the list price to get one. For a time,
Bajaj was the world’s largest scooter manufacturer.
Its 1980s sales campaign, an ode to patriotism and nascent consumerism,
became iconic on its own, with TV ads showing young boys clutching Indian flags
and happy families gathering around scooters.
“The Bajaj is ours,” the jingle said, ignoring the fact that the design
was largely borrowed from the Italian Vespa.
So when Bajaj announced late last year it was discontinuing its scooter
business to concentrate on motorcycles, the news set off a wave of
hand-wringing: Indian newspaper editorials bemoaned the changing times; Old
Bajaj scooter ads became TV and Internet sensations.
“Exit an icon,” the Statesman newspaper declared. “Salute the
scooter.”
Bajaj, though, wasn’t thinking about icons when it made its decision.
Scooter sales have plummeted in this decade as motorcycle sales have boomed.
Bajaj stopped most scooter production four years ago.
Pronob Biswas with his family rides on his Bajaj Scooter, in New Delhi.
“We too feel nostalgic about how dear Bajaj scooters have been to the
Indian middle class,” Milind Bade, a top Bajaj official told reporters. “But
the business has to move on.”
In many ways, Bajaj was simply moving with the Indian economy, which
has blossomed since it was opened to outside investment in the late 1980s.
By conservative estimates, the Indian middle class is now thought to
number about 50 million people, more than five times as many as the early
1970s. More generous estimates put the middle class as high as 250 million —
roughly a quarter of the population.
They are desperate to buy. The avalanche of advertising — for TVs,
apartment complexes, cars, cell phones, sex therapists, silk suits and saris —
can make this country look like another America, a place where buying is a
sport and a pastime.
Along the way, Bajaj has also changed. First it modernized its scooters
for increasingly finicky buyers, and then shifted decisively to motorcycles.
Its last scooter, the Kristal, sells for about $750 — compared to nearly $2,000
for its best-selling Pulsar motorcycle.
Despite the price difference, motorcycle sales reached almost 220,000
in December, an 86 percent increase compared to the same month one year
earlier. Only a few hundred scooters were sold.
And cars? They are now the new middle-class aspiration. Car sales
reached almost 154,000 in February — the highest-selling month ever, and 33
percent more than one year earlier. Last year the Indian-made Tata Nano went on
sale at around $2,400, making headlines with its claim to be the world’s
cheapest car. While not yet in full production and fairly uncommon on Indian
roads, analysts expect the Nano to soon become ubiquitous.
If this can make India seem like a place where those clunky Bajaj
scooters will soon be forgotten, Neeraj Marwah will make sure that won’t
happen.
He is an often-scowling man with a scraggly three-day beard whose
family has been selling used scooters for two generations. He works out of a
concrete store the size of a garage, sitting behind a desk that looks ready to
collapse.
Young people prefer motorcycles these days, he admits, but there are
still millions of Indians out there yearning for their first Bajaj scooter. The
are cheap, dependable and easy to repair. Marwah says he’ll be fixing them up
and selling them for decades.
“Every day I sell at least one of these things,” he said, shrugging.
“Bajaj can shut down, but I’ll still be selling them. People will always want
them, and I’ll always have some to sell.”
