NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1045: Cars and Tractors
18th September 1687
Like always, what was happening in Europe had absolutely no effect on the people of the Bharatiya Empire, although some of the people did read about it in the international news section of the major newspapers, it was only a few and far between.
However, people at the top of the power echelon, like Vijay, were completely glued to observing what was happening in Europe, Greece to be more specific.
Closing the report, Vijay let out a sigh of relief. This operation was one of the most secretive and difficult operations the Bharatiya External Pragya had ever undertaken. In terms of difficulty, it was no different from infiltrating the heartland of the Ottoman Empire.
On a surface level, it would look like what the intelligence department was doing was no big deal, but Vijay understood how risky the situation was. Although getting caught in the Ottoman Empire meant death, the outcome was only disastrous to the individual and his family, not for the whole operation, because the Ottomans took the existence of spies in their territory from the Bharatiya Empire as granted, but it is not like that in Greece.
The Greeks must feel like they had come up with the new political system all by themselves and they are not being manipulated, and even if some intelligent people understand what was going on and try to warn others, they should either be confused by the bombardment of fake propaganda all around them or simply silenced if their actions proved to be too divergent from what the Bharatiya Empire wants.
For this reason, Vijay had not even informed the senior officers about what was happening. Apart from Commander Piyush Rudrakarna and a few first lieutenants, no one else knew.
Thankfully, everything went well, and the skeleton for a communist country had been laid down.
"Ganesh, what is my itinerary today?"
" It's the day of the auction, your majesty. The Ministry of Industry will be auctioning out the permits for car manufacturing and tractor manufacturing."
Vijay suddenly remembered that hundreds of Bhalwaan 4th Gen engines, both M series and T series, had already been manufactured and were waiting to be sold.
"How are those companies doing?" Vijay asked as he looked at Ganesh, as he directed his hand towards a train set at the corner of the office left by his grandson.
Ganesh was momentarily confused about what his majesty was talking about, but looking at the train set, he immediately understood, "Putting aside Aakarsh Group of companies and Gaur Industries, the other locomotive manufacturers have also gotten into the carriage manufacturing field, your majesty."
"Oh," Vijay nodded in satisfaction, "The names are a little different, did they reorganise the company structure?"
"Yes, your majesty, and it is not only those two, but all companies that used to produce locomotives have reorganised their management structure by establishing a parent company and holding the locomotive manufacturing and car manufacturing company as a subsidiary company."
Vijay nodded and began to stroke his chin as he fell into deep thought, 'So that leaves me with 8 permits to give out.' It is actually 10, because he wanted a total of 15 companies in the empire that could manufacture either cars or tractors, but he decided to take one permit for himself for Raya Mobility and allocate another one to his son Agni. He had forgotten about the matter of his son informing him that he would be establishing a carriage manufacturing company, but the words of Ganesh reminded him that he had to keep one permit for his son.
Vijay was very satisfied that his son took the route of self-reliance. After Agni graduated, he did not ask to join Raya Shipyard, but created Bhagat Shipyard, found a niche, serviced ships, broke into shipbuilding, and once in shipbuilding, he, along with his brother, pioneered the first steam-powered ship in the empire and reached the top echelon in shipbuilding in one step. Now it looks like the same thing is repeating itself, because instead of asking him whether he could buy Raya Mobility, he asked for a permit to establish his own company. So how could he refuse?
The auction was conducted in a similar fashion to how the auctioning of the permit to manufacture locomotives was conducted.
Priority was given to companies with experience and technology, after which priority was given to the amount of money they were willing to invest, and finally, priority was given to the reliability of past products.
Basically, Overall Score = (4/9 × Technology score) + (10/3 × Investment ratio) + (2/9 × Reliability score),
As for how much the Raya Group of companies obtained by giving up the permit, it was calculated using the formula (30 − Overall Score ÷ 10) × 25
Practically no different from last time, apart from the maximum and minimum percentage, because Vijay knows that cars and tractors are much more profitable than locomotives, so he does not want to cause any trouble to his descendants by holding too much wealth.
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After the auction, time moved quickly. The canal projects across the Empire were going on as usual. The infrastructure projects were quickening the date of completion thanks to the locomotives. Greece had started the rebuilding process after selling off several of its islands to the Bharatiya Empire to obtain a loan of 200 million Varaha. Construction and nation-building projects were going on all over Southeast Asia in the newly created vassal Kingdoms.
In between, the elections also took place, and Prime Minister Vinod officially declared his unwillingness to stand for the next Prime Minister elections and started to slowly move his assets to his vassal kingdom, a newly occupied patch of land to the west of the Mozambique Strait.
The elections were surprisingly won by Narasimha Modi, the three-time Chief Minister of Solanki Puri, who not only made it one of the fastest-growing economies in the northern part of the Empire but also made its educational rankings determined by the number of high-ranking students produced in the state, standing on the same echelon as the states in the southern part of the Empire.
As for the Cabinet ministers, they won the elections once again, but attending the first parliamentary meeting, Vijay felt the awkwardness in the air. He could tell that Narasimha Modi was feeling a lot of pressure from the Cabinet. But Vijay didn't do anything to help him because this was good for him.
Moving on, several new inventions were made, including music within the moving picture machine, and the discovery of the magnetic field by Anand Binoy, which brought the Bharatiya Empire a step closer to harnessing electricity. An engineer from Gupta Nagar and an engineer from Sindh, in a collaborative project, came up with a machine that would allow a Kasari K5 engine to drive a drilling bit to dig into the Earth in search of oil, which ended up allowing the oil refineries to discover the huge gold mine that is the Southwestern Bank of the Persian Gulf, making products of crude oil much more accessible and cheap.
In the midst of all this, the companies that had won the permit all came up with different models of cars and tractors, utilising the Balwaan 4th series engines.
Aakarsh Mobility introduced the A-7, H & B Mobility unveiled the Veer, and Surya Mobility launched the S12.
Baloch Car Company, a subsidiary of Mengal and Brothers Industries, came out with the Shaan, while Tata Cars, part of the Tata Group, presented the Suraksha.
Raya Mobility, his own company, rolled out the Raya R1 Imperial, and Dravida Mobility, a subsidiary of RDA Mobility Corp, founded by Ambani, Indrasena Reddy, and Dharani, released the Dravida D4.
Brown Car Company, under Brown Industries, introduced the B-6.
Vishwakarma Mobility, formed by a consortium of five university graduates, one from Raya University, two from BIT Universities, and two from other first-tier regional universities, unveiled the Vishwakarma V1.
Finally, Agni Group of Industries, through his son's new holding, Kashi Company, launched the Kashi VK3.
As for tractor manufacturers, the first echelon was led by Gaur Industries, producing the Boomiputra G47.
Vikram Tractors rolled out the Kisan, Sudarshan Agro Technologies Pvt Ltd offered the Krishi, and Keshava Engineering and Agro Works brought forth the Dharti.
Finally, there was one of the most unique companies Vijay had ever encountered: the Engineers' Guild of Indraprastha. Vijay didn't even know how to classify this organisation, for it was entirely founded by a guild, with equity distributed according to contributions.
The more a person contributed, the greater their stake; those who contributed less saw their equity reduced. The current director was naturally the guild leader, and the company had developed a tractor named Karshak.
Vijay got to try them all, some still in the debugging stages, while some, especially from the companies boasting high technical capabilities like the Aakarsh Group of Companies, Gaur Industries, or Engineers' Guild of Indraprastha, produced extremely exquisite products. They were even production-ready.
The companies in the second echelon were the other locomotive manufacturers, which was expected, as they had ample time to prepare. What was surprising, however, was that RDA Mobility Corporation, a company founded by three second-tier shipbuilding consortiums, managed to build a prototype so promising that it even passed the road test set by the Ministry of Transportation. Other companies in similar situations included his son's own company and, interestingly enough, the Tata Group.
Of course, Raya Mobility was completely taken out of the equation because he had personally put forward a lot of suggestions to his own engineers, and he could say without any hesitation that Raya R1 Imperial was the most complete production car the empire had ever seen.