CAR-NAMA

SEPTEMBER 2003 - There was a time when stories about obtaining a telephone were regarded as a twisted joke in which the losers were the people. Their only fault was that they wanted a phone connection but that was more or less like asking for the moon. Jokes about one generation applying for a phone and the next running around with their slips were common. There was even one about the old man on his death bed croaking to his gathered family to pursue the dream and one day obtain a telephone. With his last gasp he would pass on a rumpled piece of paper to his eldest son, that great receipt that the T&T Department issued to hopefuls in those days. Even a phone sanctioned, then required months of trail blazing work to convert the sanction into a phone set that actually worked. Line faults were feared by all alike because it took weeks, months and sometimes years to have a number fixed. Sounds like macabre fiction but it wasn't too long ago. Now it seems the phone sets have had a reincarnation and returned to haunt the people in the shape of cars.

It is a shame that the President has been pushed to a position where he has issued an ultimatum to the car industry to get in line or get ready for some overhauling. The Prime Minister has been inducted in as well, which will add weight to the government's argument. The Minister for Commerce & Industries has been forced to constitute a task force which has been given about four weeks to address a long list of objectives.You would think a national calamity was upon us or the Indians had opened fire on our country. What is all the fuss about? The bane of everyone's life who wish (and have the means) to acquire a new car. There aren't many in that list since 40% of the country is hoping to see a tap installed in their village that produces that miracle liquid called water. Buying a car is not quite a priority here. The newspapers have now called the on-going farce about car prices and the fleecing of the people both by the manufacturers and the middlemen a 'scam' and even the comatose Islamabad has had an epileptic fit.

For some, this all may be a trifle hard to understand. It is even harder to understand why such an issue should be allowed to mushroom into a national disaster that invokes the highest in the land, but if one were to understand the rather basic principle that governs much of what goes on here, the car scam is perfectly understandable. The principle is simple and one of the hallowed tenets on which business operates here which is to ensure that the consumer never gets a fair deal. Or if you are not too passive in the head, a better way to put it would be to design rules where the consumer can be screwed 24/7/52. This cardinal principle runs most business here. The car industry is a happy part of it. Like most others, it believes that the game should always be in its favour and because the consumer has no strong collective voice, there is little they can do about it.

The fact is that buying a new car - and it doesn't really matter which one, means paying top money for goods which really don't measure up to the price tag they carry. Those of us who have had the opportunity to visit other countries know well that for a trifle of what you pay here, you get an infinitely superior vehicle elsewhere. Government duties and excessive taxation however have prevented those cars from entering the market here but while all this has been going on and the local car assembling empires have been set up, at the end of the day, the consumer is still at the receiving end. It is the familiar story that industries have spun again and again, using protection for their investment and 'sacrifices' to ensure high returns and large profits. In the case of the car business, the terms on which customers are forced to act amount to daylight robbery. Having deposited full amounts for the vehicle - the deposits which are then parked for months and earn huge dividends, they are left with no choice but to while away the months, seeking connections to those who work in the car industry to get a few notches up on the ladder of hopefuls. The other choice is of course to walk into any showroom where any amount of brand new cars are displayed, pay the extorted premium and drive away in the car of your dreams - which of course it is not. The equation is disgusting. Firstly you pay a vulgar amount of money for a car which is not worth that money by any stretch of the imagination, then you pay a premium and in some cases this is as much as Rs. 200,000 - 25% of the car price and should you wish to have a colour of your choice, you may end up paying even more. Why should a black car cost more than a white one is of course a matter of bewilderment to most except that black fetches a premium - never mind that it is the most impractical colour for a dust-laden country like Pakistan.

The question that people have been asking for years is why there should be a long waiting line when the same cars are falling out of hundreds of showrooms in the country - the showrooms that you can see. We all know there are the godowns where more goodies are parked for more fleecing. The government's directive on a minimum 6 month holding period for a new car before making a sale has been treated with contempt by the car dealers who have exploited those whose only sin is wanting a car. It is baffling to understand how the car industry - all men with powerful connections and the government are unable to check this criminal profiteering that has flourished for years. But then, I suppose, it is not baffling at all. Such things don't happen on their own and laws cannot be broken or principles compromised and twisted without patronage of one kind or another. At the centre of it all, there is that great common denominator; greed. And car dealers or 'Dallas' as a friend calls them, have to be the lowest of the lows. Anyone who has had the misfortune to deal with them has come away a loser. They talk fast, they lie through their teeth and wherever else they can lie from, they are utterly, completely unreliable and unscrupulous. There is something so slimy about them that most of us squirm having to deal with them. They seem to be made of an altogether different set of materials and like the goods they peddle, just as cheap and tardy. No wonder that of all the 'middlemen' they have to be the most vile. While they fudge documents, paper over fundamental flaws in the goods they sell, doctor meters, parts and whatever else they can manipulate to their advantage, they maintain a hyena like approach to bite and bleed to death any victim they can spot. A situation like the one created in Pakistan, is perfect for their deadly talents to thrive and grow in.

Then there is the question of what you actually get at the end of it all. Most cars seem to be made of thin tissue paper. You lean on one and it gives way. Look at any workshop and see some of Pakistan's pride and joy performers and you wonder what materials are used. A bump can send most bumpers falling and a minor collision leaves cars looking like something the cat brought in. New cars creak almost as soon as you have driven off. Customers who return with anguished enquiries are sent off with a two word soother; locally assembled, as if that is a quality that imported vehicles don't possess. The interiors are patchy and cheap plastic parts abound. In most cars, the seats are fairly close to the broken benches you see in the shabby district courts. As for the engines and the technology that fetch premium rupees, the less said the better. What more can one add other than to say that the leading car maker has been selling the same with an engine that the principals launched 20 years back and upgraded many times over, while here we continued to enjoy the 'new' technology? Volkswagen were once fined heavily for advertising claims that were not quite true. Here, with no proper authority that can check and verify the tall claims that lure more victims to buy second rate products at inflated prices, it is open season on the customers who have the choice to pay top money or simply live with what they have. Efforts to import reconditioned cars have been stoutly resisted by the manufacturers. When these were coming in, the people saw the difference. Even with the mandatory fleecing of the middlemen, for the end users it was a good deal. A used car was infinitely preferable to the junk that was rolling out. But the traditional Paki greed and the bleating of the car industry took care of that threat. Since then it's been great going for them, but bad news for the users.

Without fully knowing what WTO means to them, many car hopefuls are hoping they will at last get a good deal from the market. The government's threat to import 10,000 cars as a one-off might work but the task force that's been given the job of recommending measures to fix things will soon understand that if there is no executive enforcement, loud and strong, the vested interests will prevail once again and the stables will continue to stink.