Saturday, February 01, 2014

India's quality problems

It is not an exaggeration to say that there is an all-round deterioration in quality maintenance in India. Product quality is at a discount. Services quality is equally bad.

What else can explain Global NCAP (New Car Assessment Programmes) 's observation that Alto 800, i10, Nano and Figo have failed standard crash tests and pose serious risk to passengers if crash speed is above 64 km/hour? Ralph Nader would say American cars are unsure in any need and unsafe at any speed. Let him try cars produced in India also.

If driving is unsafe, flying is worse. US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which is keeping track of aviation standards in those countries whose airlines fly into the US has now determined that aviation safety standards in India are not in consonance with ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) requirements. Therefore India has been relegated from category 1 to category 2. (There are only two categories.)

In the previous post, reference was made to quality standards in a pharmaceutical company. Tolerance threshold for Indians is unfortunately very high.

The three instances discussed here are individually ominous. Release of information about all these around the same time makes us even more scared.

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