Go Hybrid Go Green

Last week Honda launched the hybrid version of its popular car model Civic. It's priced at around 21.5 lakh. Unless you are an avid climate watcher and have lakhs of surplus money to spill out for this little monster, it hardly makes any sense for you to get this car, when you can get the standard version in less than 12 lakh. Why such a substantial difference in price? That's because of 104% tax which our government levies for any imported items like luxury cars or watches. Because Honda doesn't has any manufacturing unit to produce hybrids here in India, it has to import the completely built units(CBU's) from Japan. I believe that, our government should look again into the taxation policy, specifically for hybrid cars and its ilk.

There should be minimal taxation and more promotion for an eco-friendly option like hybrid automobiles. Currently, India is annually producing 2 million units of automobiles and considering good economic growth in coming years, it can be predicted that the rise in usage of passenger car is going to be quite spiky. It makes a very good sense to promote automobiles which are powered by non-conventional energy or are hybrid. This will be not only a step towards oil-independence but also help reduce the emissions and hope for a better environment for the future generations. It's is a known fact that India's R&D is quite lagging in this kind of field and needs to put in more money; and definitely it's is going to take some time to build a good knowhow. At the same time, India should be promoting greener options like hybrid cars, non-conventional energy technologies etc. Last year government took a very wise and good decision in this line, there was a proposal to subsidise CFL's (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) and make it available in market at a price range of Rs 10-12. The main idea behind this proposal is to replace conventional lamps, which consumes more energy and has bigger carbon footprints, by CFL and currently the plan to roll this put is being chalked out. The amount of energy saved by these CFL's and the benefits from Carbon trading would take care of the subsidised money, which comes from exchequer. Now, the government should look beyond CFL's and carry forward the same zeal in every other possible scenario. Keeping full throttle on non-conventional fuel R&D, government should also provide incentives to those who opt for greener option. Say lesser insurance premium charges for hybrid vehicles insurance, or probably good tax benefits for opting for green. People respond better when they have some fair amount of positive incentives associated with the change. Hence, good incentives will drive people to these newer technologies and which will help uproot the market of conventionals, by cutting down the demand. These type of measures will definitely pull more crowd and hence less carbon emission.

Going for non-conventionals is imperative, if we don't act now oil-cartel will keep on kicking global economy under the belt, even in future. Moreover we won't be providing any healthy environment to our future generations, which is more important and which is more shameful.