AIN’T NO TIME TO DISCO.docVIP

AIN’T NO TIME TO DISCO The chant emanating from the park-facing house in Noida’s Sector 15A can be misleading. “Disco... Disco... Disco... Disco...，” it goes. Once inside， you realise it is not John Travolta re-igniting Saturday Night Fever. The house and the voice belong to 77-year-old R.C. Bhargava. Disco is his golden retriever， who has grown a bit long in the tooth and is not the most obedient of pets. Even otherwise， Bhargava is hardly likely to try the Strut or the Hustle these days. As the Chairman of Maruti Suzuki， which has 39 per cent share of the car and utility vehicles market， he is facing the worst year in a decade. The rest of the industry is just as badly off， if not worse. Eleven of the 20 companies making cars in India show falling sales in the 11 months to February. In February alone， a month in which sales slow as people wait to see what the Budget does to their income and prices， car sales fell 26 per cent. Not that the Budget helped. On the contrary， Finance Minister P. Chidambaram raised the import duty on luxury cars from 75 to 100 per cent and on high-end motorcycles from 60 to 75 per cent. The one that really hurts is his decision to raise the excise duty on sports utility vehicles from 27 to 30 per cent. “The finance minister is looking to get more out of SUVs because they are the only growing segment，” says Bhargava. If you add SUVs， growing at 54 per cent， to February’s calculations， the drop in passenger vehicle sales is only 16 per cent. The excise duty increase comes wrapped in confusion. The way SUVs have been defined – on the basis of length， engine size， and ground clearance – creates absurdities. Maruti SX4， Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla – which look like sedans and drive like sedans – qualify as SUVs. “The definition should be more clear，” sayss Sandeep Singh， second-in-command at Toyota Kirloskar Motor， which makes the best-seller Innova.“You cannot categorise an SUV based on ground clearance and engine size