Even before Tata’s $2,500 (Rs 100,000) car hits Indian roads, American auto maker Ford is singing a melancholic tune.

Ford acknowledged that its car sales in India in 2008 would be the same as last year - 40,000 (which itself was lower than the 2006 sales figure of 42,060 units).

Sure looks like Ford’s troubles in the U.S. have reached Indian shores.  

Ford India Managing Director Arvind Matthew told the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that high interest rates in India and global economic uncertainty would restrain purchases this year.

Only after Ford’s proposed small car rolls off the assembly lines and demand improves does the company expect to fully utilize its 200,000 local production capacity.

Meanwhile, Ford is investing $500 million to make a small, inexpensive car for the local market within the next two years, and to build a engine manufacturing plant that will go online by 2010.

Ford’s small car for the Indian market is expected to be priced between Rs 300,000 to Rs 400,000.

Ford said the new investment would boost its financial commitment in India to $875 million, and underscored its plan to elevate India as one of the strategic production hubs for small cars in the company’s Asia Pacific and Africa region.

Say what you will but there’s little respect for the common man in India.

Everyone is out to get the common man in India. The government, police, employers, businesses, politicians and even banks are all after the little man.

Of all the shaitans (devils) at the back of the common man in India, banks are probably the worst.

Sending out Goondas (thugs) to beat up defaulting borrowers after enticing them in the first place to take out loans seems to be the norm than the exception with Indian banks.

Today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has an interesting story on the use of aggressive tactics by collection agents hired by Indian banks to get defaulting borrowers to pay up.

After a violent attack on one individual in New Delhi,

the Delhi State Consumer Commission fined ICICI Bank, India’s largest privately owned bank by market value, almost $140,000 for what a judge called “the grossest kind of deficiency in service and unfair trade practice.” ICICI Bank has appealed the decision to the Delhi High Court, arguing that the consumer court doesn’t have the authority to impose such a large fine and that the collection agency should be held responsible for the attack, not the bank. It has also fired the collection agency responsible for the attack.

Banks have been warned by India’s Supreme Court, police and the Reserve Bank of India to stop the abuses in collection.

But we doubt these warnings will have any effect on the modern-day Indian Shylocks.