India, Feb. 21 -- First things first. We have to keep in mind that we live in a country where the people who are in power believe that cars are a luxury item. That was made clear by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the other day when he said that 1.5 crore luxury cars have been sold in India over the past five years. Now, while I believe WagonR and Santro are fairly nice cars, BMW is not, because as much as the i3 tries to be basic, it really isn't.

Luxury or premium cars in my book are cars that cost upwards of Rs 30 lakh, which would include the higher-end of mass-market brands. That means cars like the Hyundai Santa Fe and, of course, all the German premium brands as well as Lexus, Volvo and the like. The figure for sales of such cars wou...