As an "American" who's visited India as a tourist once, I have some questions to educate myself.
1) India is a very large and very diverse country. How is the culture of acceptance towards carpooling and resource sharing, especially when it will gain an ascendant middle class like we're seeing in China?
2) Vehicles have always had a status communication role. Is there something we can tap into that can impede this desire?
> 2) Vehicles have always had a status communication role. Is there something we can tap into that can impede this desire?
I really doubt it. People are always looking around for honest signals about each other, and a vehicle is the most expensive possession other people will see in a casual social setting by at least an order of magnitude. Whether you're at school, work, a bar, hiking, etc, people will see you get into your car.
1. Car pooling has become very acceptable. I live in NCR and every time I've taken an Uber Pool or Ola Share the car has been packed to capacity. This is especially popular among solo office travellers.
2. This has, sort of, lost its charm with the younger generation especially if they are earning well or used to own a car. Public transit has become faster (on the order of twice as fast during peak time) compared to driving. 2 wheelers are more popular than 4 wheels for cost and practical reasons.
Not specific to India but one theory behind luxury tax type approaches is that the social signalling still remains, but everything is shifted down a bit.
So if car pollution, parking, congestion is priced appropriately then some people will still have bigger, less efficient vehicles to show off but the baseline will be lower and therefore society as a whole is better off.
1) I think most of the resource sharing is driven out of cost necessities. There are many places where people share a single autorickshaw to the same destination. This is sometimes because there is a shortage of taxi/autorickshaws/bus availability at peak hours.
I tried Uber pool a couple of times in Mumbai and almost always travelled alone. Not sure what's the reason.
2) The status still exists. However it can be practical to not own a car as roads are extremely congested in big cities (in some places temporarily worsened by public transportation infrastructure projects)
1) India is a very large and very diverse country. How is the culture of acceptance towards carpooling and resource sharing, especially when it will gain an ascendant middle class like we're seeing in China?
2) Vehicles have always had a status communication role. Is there something we can tap into that can impede this desire?