India to lose an icon

Indian's burgeoning middle class has spoken, and its once insatiable appetite for the humble scooter is all but over.

According to a report in last Saturday's Fairfax media outlets, Bajaj, India's second biggest powered two-wheeler manufacturer, has announced it will stop making scooters from next March.

Demand for Bajaj's sole remaining scooter, the 95cc Kristal, has collapsed, with Indians now turning their attention to cars or more expensive motorcycles - which Bajaj also produces.

For some, the passing of the Bajaj scooter will barely cause a ripple, but for others it's creating widespread dismay.

"It needed to be kicked, it needed to be tilted at an impossible angle for the fuel to start flowing and its spark plugs needed more cleaning than Bihar politics, but it blended in perfectly with how we lived - restrained, repressed, modest, versatile," Santosh Desai, a marketing and advertising expert for the Business Standard newspaper, was quoted as saying in The Age.

The 145cc Chetak will officially go down as Bajaj's cult scooter, and was produced between 1972-2006 in both two and four-stroke configuration. The Chetak, named after the horse of Indian warrior Rana Pratap Singh, was once the highest-selling scooter in the world, and a wedding was rated a pathetic flop if a scooter was not the main wedding gift. In Australia, a dud wedding equates to the beer running out before 10.00pm.