31–40 of 49 posts
It's Tata (singular). What a lewd misspelling.
The Tata car is a ridiculous piece of metal that should not be called a car. So I hope the Tata home will be better... Not very optimistic though...
As with most things coming out of India, I would take this with a grain of salt. There've been promises of things like a $10 laptop and a $35 tablet in the past. When (if ever) they actually materialized, however, the price was either much higher or the quality/features much lower than promised. Relatedly, this is a big difference between India and China. In China, when the CPC decides to do something, it happens, no…
Consider that if you eliminate building codes, sealed windows, and the need for thermal insulation a "house" is trivial and could be made with anything from cement to adobe to some sort of lighter and stronger version of adobe made with modern materials. I visited some houses in Costa Rica that were cinder block structures with corrugated roofs and wide bars for windows (to prevent thieves but not geckos) and these w…
As with most things coming out of India, I would take this with a grain of salt. There've been promises of things like a $10 laptop and a $35 tablet in the past. When (if ever) they actually materialized, however, the price was either much higher or the quality/features much lower than promised. Relatedly, this is a big difference between India and China. In China, when the CPC decides to do something, it happens, no…
Sadly, 'heads rolling' is closer to the truth than you probably meant. Human rights abuses of workers working on state-sponsored public-facing projects is common. :/
eg http://www.rei.com/product/779454/mountain-hardwear-trango-4...
This equation holds true in the US, and should hold true in India. The reason for US subsidies is that sometimes, the right side of the equation is still negative because the value to the end user is so low (think section 8 where tenants only have $500/month or less to rent housing, feed their family etc.)
Building a $500 house will only be beneficial to people if the right side of the equation has a value less than 0. If the value of the right hand side of the equation is greater than 0 then the land value simply goes up.
€500 house sounds like they are monetising the construction of future slums / shanty towns. The Indian government need to get their act together and not leave it up to the private companies to clean up the mess in India. I have spent time in Delhi and what I have seen is shocking. Private companies run taxi services for their workers because it is so unsafe and the government run services are so unreliable that they…
When Indians ask me the difference between China and India, I tell them "China has economic wealth and great infrastructure - India can't flush it's sh*t out of the cities. But India has democracy and is spiritually wealthy."
I don't have the link handy, but there was another article as a followup to the $500 house saying the whole thing would hurt more than help. The construction, maint, and customizing of the houses were an important part of the local economy even as depressed as it was.
For a country like India, what the Tatas are doing is simply commendable. They are trying to step in and solve some fundamental problems here and I would like to see them succeed -- if the governments and babus will allow them to.