Haste oft goes waste

A couple of Sundays back, I wrote of the Sushant Singh Rajput death case media coverage and berated sections of the Indian press for being hyperactive, counter-intuitive and -creative, shamelessly insensitive and downright irresponsible. In writing that column, my attempt was to jolt them hard and wake up the some remnants of conscience and humility that I was sure still remained in the collective conscience of these so-called reporters. I was wrong. Quite, quite wrong. For it appears that the coverage of the actor's death case and the mystery around it was just a miserable trailer. The real 'picture abhi baaki hai' syndrome is being played out now by other creative and equally careless members of the media fraternity, and in right earnest.

Today, let's single out the automobile sector. We have been bombarded with news reports that Toyota Kirloskar Motors is getting needled by the incredibly high taxes on car manufacturers in India and is, therefore, planning to truncate its investments in the country. Yes, the media had a senior management personnel of the company on record, but it did not bother to double-check or ascertain the veracity of the situation before spinning out a doomsday scenario. The resultant carnage in the guise of reportage forced Toyota India Vice-Chairman Vikram Kirloskar to counter the septic stories and re-affirm the company's commitment to continue investing and expanding in the Indian market.

Harley 'not' exiting

Then let's talk Harley Davidson's presence in India, and this both takes and breaks the proverbial cherry. News reports in leading publications on Thursday and Friday just gone by have been screaming and raucously reporting that the iconic United States-based motorcycle manufacturer is moving out of India in the wake of straggling sales triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The curtain is dropping on Harleys in India, a few raved. Wrong selection of bike models for India led to the demise, others ranted. Mounting losses in a troubled market have coerced the move, some calmer others cooed.

Wrong again. If these learned reporters had bothered to dig just a mite deeper, they would have found out that yes, Harley Davidson is rethinking its strategy in India. But it is not exiting the Indian market, which is the world's largest motorcycle garden. Not at all. A little bird informs me that Harley Davidson is only re-farming its options in the country, given depleting sales catalysed by the Coronavirus situation.

Harley Davidson has quietly tied up with India's largest motorcycle manufacturer (Hint 1 is that this company had a tie-up for years with a Japanese partner; and Hint 2 is that this Japanese company also makes some cool cars). Harley is quietly selling its on-ground assets to them. That includes the plant in Bawal, Haryana and its service centers across the country. In exchange, Harley will get one line in all assembly lines of this Indian partner and continue to manufacture bikes in India. It will also get access to the partner's service centers across the country, thereby increasing its after-sales reach to customers in the tens and hundreds. That jobs will be lost at Harley India in the process is a bitter truth in the new India, the new world we live in today.

Cars, bikes 'flagellating'

The next raw and brutally raped case of reportage in the automobile sector was witnessed over the last few weeks, one that claimed that motorcycle and car sales in the country were tanking. Another near-death prediction, citing lack of liquidity and buying power as millions of jobs were lost and / or salaries truncated. The parabola led to a clinical and certain conclusion – there was no inclination anymore in India to purchase new vehicles. A 'flagellating market', one aspiring Pulitzer-winner proclaimed in his report.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, car and motorcycle sales were down for a few months, but why wouldn't they be? You and I, sitting locked up inside our homes, could hardly teleport ourselves to showrooms and buy new vehicles. Even if we could, we wouldn't be using those vehicles anytime soon, surely not till the time machine gave us wind of what lies in the near and distant future. So yes, sales were down in the two-three months of the lockdown and the Unlocks. But our nearly award-winning reporters, also cooped up in their homes and getting phone calls, craftily-configured PDF files and Excel sheets, decided to go ballistic with their headlines and intros. Down. Out. Gone. Dhisshum.

Idiots & half-truths

In the Corporate world, a mirthful little analogy says it all: "Pay peanuts, get monkeys". A simile to this could be: "Trust idiots, get half-truths". We are trusting idiots. To prove this theorem, look at these numbers which speak for themselves. After the historic zero sales in April this year, when we were all locked down, the Indian auto industry witnessed a faster than expected month-on-month rebound in the May to August 2020 period. The top two carmakers in the country, Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai, led the recovery in the auto market in August with 20.2 per cent and 19.9 per cent increase in their sales of passenger vehicles during the month, respectively. Motorcycle sales also almost caught up with last year's numbers, when there was no pandemic.

Five months into our new way of living, top manufacturers in the passenger vehicle and two-wheeler segment have reported that year-on-year domestic sales are on the rebound, even more than in the same months last year. Go rural, where tractor sales are higher than ever. Only the commercial vehicle category (read trucks) is finding it hard to get more wheels on the road.

Why the rebound?

Quite simply, because of basic, human fear. You and I do not want to get on to buses and metro railways anytime soon. Thus, we opt for survival and safety in private transport, even if that means sacrificing other necessities, those that we have now learnt to live without thanks to the pandemic. Today, we live minimal, if only in order to continue to live. The Millennium Post was the first to report last week that one in five Indians do not want to use public transport anytime soon. These were the insights of a survey conducted by ASSOCHAM and Primus Partners.

The survey also revealed that a whopping 73 per cent of respondents said they would prefer to use their own vehicles (either 2-wheelers or 4-wheelers) and shun buses, cabs, auto-rickshaws and metro trains. The figure of 21 per cent still opting for public transport in 'Unlock' India was a whopping 34 per cent lower than the pre-lockdown levels of 55 per cent. This is what is translating into auto industry sales, with car sales touching 197,523 units in July 2020, 6 per cent more than the previous month and just 1 per cent less than July 2019. Thus, personal vehicle sales are soaring.

No monkeys, please

End of column, I have only one submission, epithet and request. Let's be sanguine. Sensible. Responsible. We live in trying times. Most are confined to their homes today and depend on all possible means of information to stay aware of what is happening in the world around them, if only because these events may impact their own personal lives. Newspapers and portals are one such source. The social media, unfortunately, has a large share of soothsayers and doomsayers. Therefore, we have to preserve the sanctity of the few establishments that we grew up with, considering them irrevocably trustworthy. Let's not turn our Fourth Estate into the circus that it is fast-becoming.

I have no children. I do have two dogs and two cats. And things are getting to a stead that if I put on a news channel on television or read a news column out aloud now, I ensure that those eight highly-capable canine and feline ears are out of hearing range. I can't have my babies turn into monkeys.

The author is a communications consultant and a clinical analyst. [email protected]