MOVE over, Montego and Daewoo. You're far too stick and soft
for India's terrible terrain. Outside the cities in Punjab and
Haryana, the highways - and the fields - belong to this rumbling, dyspeptic roadhog called Maruta, a contemptuous corruption of a simpering cousin, the Maruti. The Maruta is rural
homegrown from rudder to axle: it's a defiant insult to every
self-respecting automobile designer from Ford to BMW. But it's
a contraption that would have done subaltern designmeister
Victor Papanek proud. Because it works.
Ramjan Ali, 34, of Sahdei village, Gurgaon, is one happy
man. His Maruta brings him Rs 300 a day, ferrying people,
crops and cattle in daytime, powering his pumpset by night,
irrigating the 2 ha of land he owns.
Gurgaon and Faridabad, the 2 Haryana districts adjoining
Delhi, are now teeming with these wheezers. The Maruta was
first invented - tacked together, actually - 10 years ago by
some ingenious mechanics in Moga in Punjab. The creature is
inexpensive to make, is fuel efficient (it uses diesel) and has the
endurance of the Iron Horse.
The design is simplicity itself. A 10 horsepower irrigation
pump is fixed in front of a sleekish - in bullock cart terms -
flatbed wooden cart measuring 1.5 in by 2 in. The pumpset is
the thudding powerdrive. A fan belt spins a camshaft attached
to the rear wheels. Initially, it had no shock absorbers but
the wheels were pneumatic enough
to tackle India's giant highway
potholes.
But over time, the Maruta
brought with it unprecedented concepts of automotive luxury.
Dismantling old jeeps, the rural
innovators outfitted the vehicle
with a 4-speed combination gearbox
(3 front gears and I reverse), a radiator, leaf springs, rear brakes and,
instead of the rudder, a steering
wheel that needs a Hercules to
turn. "With all these gadgets, the
jugad (makeshift arrangement) has
become a very good vehicle for the
rural areas and is certainly better
than the tempo (a diesel-run
3-wheeler)," says Jai Singh, a
mechanic from Sohna, an idyllic hill
town known for its hot springs.
Ramjan Ali bears him out. "I
put just 5 litres of diesel in the morning and run it for about 100 km a
day." Only 2 years ago he had bought the Maruta for
Rs 33,000. A tempo would have cost him over Rs 60,000
and consumed twice the fuel. Besides, the long-snouted
tempo can carry a maximum of 20 very uncomfortable
passengers. Rarnjan Ali's Maruta can barge through some of
the worst macadam in the world at 40 kin an hour, with
40 people jostling for space on it - almost as many as a
minibus tan carry.
With fares ranging from Re I to Rs 4, the jugad, over the
past 6 years, has evolved into a very viable public transport
vehicle for the people in these villages, connected - if at all -
by scarred, bumpy roads. Saifuddin, 62, of Rithora village,
Gurgaon, often has to come to Nuh, the nearest town, to sell
cattle: "Today, I manage to return to my village with the goats
for just 3 rupees. Earlier, I had to walk all the way, which is not
easy for an old man like me."
Like all good innovatiots, the Maruta is forced by unanticipated problems to constantly evolve. One recurrent problem
with these motley assemblages is brake failure. "The small and
weak washers fall apart wheh the brakes are suddenly applied
on a bumpy road," says SA 'n@ ir Ahmad, 45, of Palwal, a small
industrial town in Faridaba4 district. Repairs, he says ruefully,
cost Rs 200 each time th4, go bust. Ahmad, however, has
solved the problem. The ru6ber washers have been removed
and nylon brake shoes fitted to the rear wheels. For a mere
Rs 600, "1 can forget brake failures," he beams.
The collective determination to
make this machine a success is amazing. Someone somewhere is con-
stantly adding a bit here, knocking
off a bit there. Mahipal, from Sohna,
has been plying his Maruta for the
past 3 years on the Sohna-Damdama
road. Fed up with a frequently overheated radiator, he has replaced the
small jeep radiator with a gurgling
monster. And Raju of Hodal,
Faridabad, is tacking on a car battery
to replace the conventional dynamorun bulbs with more powerful and
longer lasting halogen lights.
But these lights are also a dead
giveaway. The police couldn't
care less if these contraptions have
solved a chronic rural problem -
that of long-distance mobility. In
purely legal terms, Marutas cannot
be registered. So the cops have their
own jugad - an annual bribe of
Rs 2,000.
