The recent demise in Delhi of Brij Mohan Lal Munjal, chairman of Hero MotorCorp Ltd — the country’s largest producer of automotive two wheelers (6.63 million units in the year ended March 31, 2015) — marks the end of an era of the two-wheeler manufacturing industry in India. It’s pertinent to note that right until the mid-1980s, the entire production of automotive two-wheelers (scooters mainly manufactured by the Pune-based Bajaj Auto Ltd) aggregated 500,000 units. In 1984, the Jalandhar (Punjab)-based Hero Cycles, promoted by the Munjal family which claimed to be the world’s largest cycles manufacturer, signed a historic collaboration agreement with Honda Motors, Japan to jointly manufacture automotive two-wheelers. When Hero Honda Motors went into production a year later, it sparked a demand explosion for motorcycles which within a few years overwhelmed the scooter manufacturing industry, and almost wiped out Bajaj Auto. Shortly after the Hero Honda collaboration agreement was signed, a 15-strong delegation of press personnel — including your correspondent, then editor of Businessworld — was invited by Hero Honda to visit the massive Hamamatsu motor-cycles manufacturing plant of Honda Motors in Japan. Despite the ill-behaved Indian press party lapping up the lavish hospitality of Honda Motors in Japan, most of them wrote forgettable, desultory descriptions of the mind-boggling technology and productivity of the Japanese company where fully-ready mobikes were assembled in five minutes. Except your editor who wrote a detailed 12-page cover story titled ‘Honda is Coming!’ However this effort earned your correspondent the wrath of Rahul Bajaj, the self-absorbed chairman of Bajaj Auto. A decade later when EducationWorld was launched and floundering in shallow waters, Bajaj who had sworn eternal friendship earlier, refused point-blank to lend a helping hand, despite his persistent lip service to education initiatives. Unsurprisingly, neither did Munjal who had issued numerous IOUs after the BW cover story gave Hero Honda Motors a flying start. Both these captains of India Inc were unfortunately too limited to appreciate that “greater than the tread of mighty armies, is the power of an idea whose time has come”. Colonised mind-sets Although the pompous mediocrities of imperial Great Britain who by accident rather than design, ruled the Indian subcontinent for almost two centuries before they were outmanouevred by the famous naked fakir (Mahatma Gandhi) and sent packing 68 years ago, they managed to colonise the minds of third world English-speaking native elites with much greater success than they were able to subjugate the natives. Even seven decades later, large sections of the country’s English speaking public seem enamoured with colonial value premises and prejudices. In mid-November several mainstream dailies and magazines published the result of a poll conducted by People, a British magazine, according to which footballer David Beckham is the world’s “handsomest man”. Moreover radio jockeys of FM channels shameless in their adulation of Western mores and men, went to town proclaiming this self-serving news tidbit of People. Yet an examination of several photographs of Beckham indicates a pallid individual whose hair is barely distinguishable, and…
