market-position is no longer unassailable -- but, following the Supreme Court's ruling on emission norms a little after Parekh's pronouncement, you can safely reduce around Rs 1,000 crore from this sale price.

The reason is simple. Following the Supreme Court's decision to advance the European emission standards for cars sold in the National Capital Region -- Euro-I has been advanced 10 months and Euro-II five years -- Maruti will be the hardest hit. While all the new cars like the Matiz and the Santro already meet the Euro-I emission norms which come into effect this June, Maruti does not and may find it difficult to do so. So unless a quick solution is found by Maruti and its vendors who've gone into a huddlefollowing the Court ruling, it's likely that come June 1, Maruti will have to sacrifice its largest market -- Delhi. And the way things stand, while the other manufacturers are confident that they'll be able to meet the Euro-II deadline, Maruti's not even talking about this more stringent norm.Sure, Maruti will eventually meet the norms, may be with a little bit of a lag, and will be able to sell in the National Capital Region, but increasingly, in the consumer's eyes, it is seen as a company that is not giving the best technology. That, for a company that wishes to remain market leader is bad news.

On the face of it, Maruti's top management should be held to blame, for they should have seen the writing on the wall, and introduced new-generation engines a long time ago -- the current engine has not been changed since the first Maruti was manufactured in the country around 15 years ago. And when the new engine was designed by Maruti's partner Suzuki in Japan in June 1996, Maruti failed to take a decision onwhen to introduce it. Interestingly even now, when Maruti has announced its plans to introduce four new models next year, it has still not firmed up the price details, adding fuel to rumours that even these will be delayed.

But anyone who's followed the government's acrimonious relations with Suzuki, its equal partner in Maruti, ever since K. Karunakaran was the Congress government's industry minister, knows that Maruti's top management had little effective voice in running Maruti. Things didn't improve under the United Front either, with Murasoli Maran virtually taking over where Karunakaran left off, and continuing the Suzuki's-ripping-off-Maruti on the spare parts tirade. This, and the infamous acrimony over Suzuki allegedly not giving Maruti the gear-box technology, were used to sour relations between the two partners completely. Nothing came of this, the charges were never substantiated, and the gear-box argument was a non-starter -- it made more sense for Maruti to invest in new models and the valueaddition in gear boxes was so low it didn't justify the massive investment.

But what this bitterness did do, is that Maruti then began to be run like a government company, with every major decision to be cleared by the government, even though Suzuki was an equal partner, and Maruti was not a public sector unit. As a result, for close to two years, till the BJP government and its industry minister Sikander Bakht showed the guts to smoke the peace pipe with Suzuki, various joint secretaries in the government sat on the new-engine proposal. And even though Bakht did show tremendous foresight in his accord, even this didn't resolve things comfortably. A virtual stalemate exists till date, with what are seen as pro-Suzuki and anti-Suzuki sides pulling in different directions.

The first result of this stalemate was visible when the new Korean majors came in last year and gave Maruti's outdated technology a run for its money. At 800 cc, the Matiz packed a lot more punch than even the 1000 cc Maruti Zen, and theSantro's power had most buyers debating furiously whether it made sense to stay with the market leader anymore. Then came the Tata's Indica, and the market place looked even bloodier. Especially since, in the face of the brutal competition, the only way that Maruti could survive was to slash prices dramatically, and to use its huge cash-reserves to cushion the fall in profitability. The price cuts helped retain customers, though its profitability has taken a bruising in the bargain.

Now, in a situation like this, it's obvious that even if the government was to offer to offload its stake in Maruti, whether to Suzuki or to some other global major like General Motors, the value it will get will be vastly lower than if it had done so a few years ago, when the suggestion was first mooted. In fact, looking at the goings-on at Maruti in retrospect, it can be argued that every move various governments of the day made, to delay things, to cause a stalemate due to which the company stopped working on new models; allof this was designed to lower the price that a potential acquirer would have to pay for getting control of the company. Don't hold Karunakaran or Maran responsible for it, though, or believe they did this deliberately. They were simply playing politics, scoring petty points because their egos came in the way. Sure, the country suffered, with its top auto company getting badly bruised, but don't all politicians do this? All the time?