It's also budget time in India, where the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, has raised the duty on imported bikes from 10% to 30% and on components from 10% to 20%. I came across
this article protesting on environmental and social grounds in a national businessy paper. The gist of the article is that protection has allowed India's manufacturers to concentrate on the low demands of the domestic market, resulting in their being left behind technologically and now by their own customers, who are starting to be attracted by higher-quality imported models.
Thanks to protective barriers and cheap price points, for decades, India made working class bicycles. Simple in engineering, these models got indigenised. Light frames and gears remained distant.
As the economy opened up, local manufacturers fiddled with cycle design. Prolonged focus on domestic market meant they trailed overseas brands in design and performance-DNA. Used to business backed by volumes, they were also risk-averse.
At the same time, import duties will mean price increases even for the cheapest and simplest models due to imported components, but by sheltering domestic manufacturers from the urgency of modernising, may deny Indians better bikes and put Indian brands even further behind.
This reminded me of the British cycle industry but in reverse, where we no longer make basic models here but still have an almost handbuilt segment of high end models, but still inevitably using imported components and often imported frames too.
The writer also makes the point that it's contrary, in a time of high and rising oil prices, not to mention environmental dangers and potential scarcities, to discourage cycling but impose no extra burden on motoring - I believe someone made the same point about Osborne's budget.
If the Finance Minister actually did something to encourage it, then it would have added character to that Budget in times of high oil price. Besides, if we increase the breadth and depth of cycle use, don't we address the manufacturing opportunity the Budget sought to create through old-fashioned tariff barrier?
