The head of the Italian motor traders' federation Federauto, Filippo Pavan Bernacchi, blamed "an overdose of taxes aimed at hitting, if not criminalising, the acquisition, ownership and use of cars".
Pavan Varma, the director-general of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, also thinks that in at least one respect the middle class of his own country behaves more like members of its elite than as a distinctive group of its own.