Late last week the central government announced the vehicle scrapping policy (VSP). As the Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, put it in the Parliament, the aim of the VSP is to create “an eco-system for phasing out of unfit and polluting vehicles”.
So how will this be put into action? Using the public private partnership (PPP) model involving the state governments, private sector and the automobile companies, the central government plans to promote the setting up of automated fitness centres (AFCs).
These AFCs will issue vehicle fitness certificates to private vehicles and commercial vehicles based on “emission tests, braking, safety equipment among many other tests which are as per the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989.”
A commercial vehicle which is 15 years old and fails the vehicle fitness test will be declared an end of life vehicle and scrapped. Similarly, a private vehicle which is 20 years old and fails the vehicle fitness test will be declared to be an end of life vehicle and scrapped. Further, if owners don’t renew the registration certificate, their vehicle may be declared as an end of life vehicle and scrapped.
In order to disincentivise commercial vehicle owners who own vehicles which are 15 years old, from continuing to use them, even if they clear the vehicle fitness test, the fee for the fitness certificate and the fitness test will be set on the higher side. For private vehicle owners with vehicles which are 15 years old, the re-registration fee will be set on the higher side.
The point being that if you have a private vehicle which is 20 years old or perhaps even older, the government wants you to stop using the vehicle and buy a new one, irrespective of what state it is in. For commercial vehicles, the same logic applies for vehicles which are at least 15 years old.
And the expectation is this will lead to lower pollution, newer cars, safer pedestrians, more spending, more investment and more jobs. QED.
The minister expects additional investments of Rs 10,000 crore and 35,000 job opportunities to be created because of this.
It will also lead to banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) giving out more loans. Of course, given that the auto industry and the auto-ancillary industry use a lot of contract workers, one could possibly argue that this could lead to more work opportunities for them as well.
The question is how will things really play out? Let’s try and understand that in some detail.
Economics is basically the study of incentives and second order effects. The trouble is that politicians and policy makers don’t keep this in mind while designing policy, particularly the second order effects of what they are proposing.
Let’s try and understand this pointwise.
1) There are a total of 1.02 crore vehicles, both commercial and private, which fall under the defined category of older vehicles. Even if a small proportion of these vehicles are scrapped they will generate a huge amount of non-biodegradable waste.
What plans do we have to handle all this waste coming our way? As the press release announcing the policy pointed out: “Efforts are also being made to set up Integrated Scrapping Facilities across India.” Even while taking into account that this policy will be implemented over the next few years, this sounds too much like work in progress than definitive economic policy. One needs a lot more clarity on this front.
2) As a way to get the scheme going, the government first plans to scrap its older vehicles. As the press release announcing the plan puts it: “It is being proposed that all vehicles of the Central Government, State Government, Municipal Corporation, Panchayats, State Transport Undertakings, Public Sector Undertakings and autonomous bodies with the Union and State Governments may be de-registered and scrapped after 15 years from the date of registration.” This is supposed to be implemented from April 1, 2022 onwards, or little over a year from now.
Why have this blanket policy at a time when governments, in particular state governments, are already short of money? Why not look at the fitness of vehicles and then decide? If at all, vehicles of the central government and the public sector enterprises tend to be decently maintained.
3) Also, the assumption here is that only older vehicles cause pollution. The manufacturing of newer vehicles needs electricity. Most electricity in India is generated by burning coal, which causes pollution. Steel goes into the making of vehicles. The process of making of steel, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That causes pollution as well. The same is true of plastic and pretty much everything else which goes into the making of vehicles. Hence, every new vehicle that is produced has a carbon footprint.
Of course, all this pollution doesn’t show up in cities where most private vehicles are driven and tends to be well distributed across the country. But shouldn’t a policy that has lower pollution as one of its key points, take this basic factor into account as well? Further, we need to consider the fact that many older private vehicles are not constantly in use.
4) As I have explained earlier, the government wants private and commercial vehicle owners to buy new cars. Of course, as and when this happens, the automobile companies are supposed to benefit. This explains why companies have come out in favour of this policy (or even otherwise, when do Indian businessmen ever disagree with the government). But this doesn’t take a very basic factor into account.
Whatever we might like to say about the new India and such things, we are a poor country at the end of the day. And covid has only made things even more difficult by pushing many more people into poverty, as health bills have mounted, incomes have crashed and small businesses have gone bust.
Hence, assuming that people will go out and buy new vehicles if the older vehicles are scrapped or because re-registration is made more expensive, is just looking at first order effects of policy, in the same way that economists tend to believe that lower interest rates always push up consumption.
Private vehicle owners who are not heavy users of their vehicles, might just prefer to use Uber or Ola or even the metro infrastructure coming up across India’s major cities. (This reminds me of a time when the government kept telling us that slower automobile sales were primarily because of Uber and Ola).
Further, owners might financially not be in a position to buy a new vehicle. Already, the trucking industry has spoken up against the idea.
Also, even if owners buy a new vehicle, they might cut consumption on something else given that there is only so much money going around. Hence, net-net, the impact on the overall economy may not be much.
The trouble is that the costs of second order effects are not so obvious and straightforward, whereas the supposed benefits are easy to convey in a simplistic way. And politicians love stuff which they can convey in a simplistic way.
5) Kitna deti hai (how much does it give?), goes a Maruti advertisement, telling us that Indians are price conscious value for money consumers. And there is nothing wrong with this, given that an automobile is probably the second most expensive thing we buy during our lifetime. So, while the idea that old polluting vehicles need to be discarded is a noble one, what is in it for the consumer?
This is what the government is planning. a) The owner will be paid 4-6% of the showroom price of a new vehicle, when his old vehicle is scrapped. b) The state governments may be advised to offer a road- tax rebate of up to 25% for personal vehicles and up to 15% for commercial vehicles. c) The vehicle manufacturers are also advised to provide a discount of 5% on purchase of new vehicle against the scrapping certificate. d) The road transport minister has requested the finance minister and states to give a concession in goods and services tax (GST) on purchase of new vehicles.
There are too many ifs and buts in the above paragraph. As usual, the government seems to be in a hurry to announce and implement a policy. As I have said in the past a massive cut in GST on automobiles will encourage buying. What the government will lose out on per unit of sales, it is more than likely to make up for through volumes.
One understands that the road transport minister cannot ensure all of this on his own, which is why it is important that the government spends some time in discussing and figuring out how to design and implement policy. Also, it is important to carry out small experiments in union territories, before announcing policies which need to be implemented across the length and the breadth of the country.
As Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah write In Service of the Republic:
“The safe strategy in public policy is to incrementally evolve—making small moves, obtaining feedback from the empirical evidence, and refining policy work in response to evidence.”
But the trouble is that small moves involve a lot of time, effort and thinking, which is very difficult for a government which believes in constant action and constantly creating new narratives to keep people busy and happy. The narrative also feeds into the idea that the government is trying to do new things.
6) Take a look at what happened to two-wheeler sales in 2019-20 (This is before covid struck). Sales fell by nearly 18% year on year to 17.42 million units, as the price went up due to various reasons. Hence, India is a very price sensitive market and the point is that there has to be a huge benefit involved in buying a new vehicle in a tough economic environment.
While the notion of pollution control is a noble one, it is not something which is going to get people to go out and buy new vehicles, unless it is very clear what is in it for them. Ultimately, if you want people at large to behave in a certain way, the right incentive should be on offer, something this half-baked policy, like the policy to encourage electric vehicles before it, lacks.
To conclude, one does wonder, what were they doing all these years, given that the policy has been on the anvil for a while now.
