THE FALL OF A KING

(onionlive.com)

It is difficult not to admire Vijay Mallya, the flamboyant flying baron, with a lifestyle that could fill gossip columns all through the year. His son Siddharth’s fiancée, the rising star Deepika Padukone, adds a magic charm to the Mallya clan. If celebrity status is tested by the ton-load of rumours they generate, the grapevine has it that Deepika’s new flat in Mumbai is a gift from a generous well-wisher, whoever he may be.  

But flying is a different ball game, especially flying amidst turbulence. As India’s GDP is rising, and India’s population admirably alarmingly (or alarmingly admirably, if you are an optimist), Kingfisher’s debt too is rising admirably alarmingly to hit $1.2 bn.   

While shareholders are complaining that they are not getting the value for their money, passengers are complaining that they are not getting the seats they have reserved. The companies that have leased their planes to Kingfisher are now demanding their planes back as payments have fallen behind schedule. 

In business for six years, India’s second largest airlines operating 340 flights a day connecting 54 cities, is now axed to 300 flights to cut costs. The complaints of salaries not paid and pilots quitting in exodus add to the king’s woes! But the government does not want Mallya’s airlines to close down; certain influential ministers are trying to mediate a bail-out plan with some banks to ease the cash crunch.

India, the fastest growing global aviation market today, is expected to be the fourth biggest aviation market by 2020 and third biggest domestic market after the US and China. India's domestic air traffic, the second highest after Brazil, grew by 14 per cent against Brazil's 15.1 per cent.

Already experiencing a shortage of pilots, the demand for pilots as well as engineers and cabin crew will grow, which is good news for the job market. And the debut of Dubai's first low cost airline Flydubai in Ahmedabad, the world's third fastest growing city, is the harbinger of good tidings.  

The Indian aerospace market will need nearly 1,100 commercial jets worth $130 billion over the next 20 years, a windfall for global aircraft industry. Karnataka is setting up a 250-acre aerospace special economic zone (SEZ) at Devanahalli in Bengaluru.

With a good bail-out package, Kingfisher could turn around in two years and rule the sky. The King could be King once again!  

DEATH DANCE OVER 


KUDANKULAM!

By SUNNY THOMAS

Before Abdul Kalam set foot on Kudankulam, it had two notorious visitors – the ghost of Chernobyl and the paranoia of Fukushima – which set the stage for Tamil Nadu politicians to play the Shylock to demand its pound of flesh. Indian democracy is run by agitators and scamsters and, of course, by the government fire-fighting to save the situation, which is called governance. 

Governments across the world are notorious for hiding facts and figures from the public, and any assurance on safety must be taken with a pinch of salt. If Kalam’s assurance has not cut much ice with the villagers, his Rs 200-crore economic package may sell. See how Mamata Banerjee’s stand on petrol price hike softened when Pranab Mukherjee’s diplomacy was at work. Politicians in Tamil Nadu as in West Bengal see the wisdom of goodies, and finally the farmers may allow the Centre to re-start work on the first unit of Kudankulam power plant, suspended from October 2011. 

Which villager is not flattered by 4-lane roads leading to the destinations he has to frequently travel, like Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and Maduri; and employment for 10,000 of their kin, and self-employment loans? Not just this, multi-storeyed housing projects with sports complex for the coastal people, mechanized boats, fish processing and cold storage facilities for fishermen; and one million litres of drinking water a day for all after desalinating seawater. If things go smoothly, which means the money moving on the right lane (not into the pockets of middlemen), Kudankulam could be the envy of the rest of India, or at least villages of its kind.

As for the safety of nuclear plants, there is no country on the Atomic Energy Map of the world that did not have a tryst with destiny – minor or major disasters that press the panic button. A catalogue of nuclear plant disasters (search Googles) would turn nuclear optimist into nuclear sceptist. And no decade passes since Hiroshima and Nagasaki without a nuclear plant incident. The US had at least two to account for, France and China their own mistakes, Japan, and Soviet Union the worst ones; but UK’ s was the most sensational one because it happened near a dairy farm, forcing a ban on dairy products! 

The good news is Tamil Nadu, with or without Kudankulam, has the potential to be the power house of south India. The state has immense potential to harness solar power because it receives sufficient solar radiation for 10 months a year. And a 100 mw solar power station could be set up in two years whereas a conventional thermal or nuclear power station takes six years for completion. As for cost advantage, entrepreneurs are coming forward offering to set up solar power stations at Rs10 crore per mw, says GM Pillai, Director-General of the World Institute of Sustainable Energy (WISE), who is an IAS officer on deputation to WISE.

The projected cost of the two reactors of 1,000 mw each, being set up at Kudankulam, is Rs13165 crore (US$ 3 billion). But there are hidden costs like the cost of operation, maintenance and safety, which if taken into account will double the estimate. Moreover, the government is heavily subsidizing the nuclear power stations, and the cost of heavy water for reactors is Rs 800 per kg whereas its costs Rs 30,000 on international market !

The fear of Kudankulam turning into a dinosaur is slightly misplaced. Listen to M Pushparayan, who spearheads the agitation: The matter should be discussed with the chief minister… If she is satisfied and advises us on that point we have no problem on allowing work to restart at the first unit.  It is amply clear who plays the deity and who plays Hanuman! Is the Roman Catholic Bishop A Jude Paulraj among the agitators? Well , His Holiness represents the poor fishermen of the coastal region, and those who understand politics know the value of demographic engineering.     

To give a quick recap, the signing of an agreement on November 20, 1988 by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signalled the beginning of this project., which suffered benign neglect for 10 years because of political upheaval and break-up of the Soviet Union. Also, the US opposed it on the grounds of not meeting the 1992 terms of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). In 2008, negotiation for four additional reactors at the site began. The capacity, though not declared, is expected to be 1000 mw each. The new reactors would bring the total capacity of the power plant to 9200 mw. Bad luck plagued the project all along and in June 2011, chief designer Sergei Ryzhov was killed in an air mishap (The superstitious could add Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination and Gorbachev’s ouster in a coupe to the list!).

The first unit is expected to go on stream in December (2011).

DOCTOR’S DEATH-WISH

SUNNY THOMAS

The story is told of a terminally ill patient, who was in a coma but came out to find himself being carried by four men.

‘Where are you taking me?’ 

‘To the grave yard,’ they replied him.

‘But I am alive,’ he protested.

‘Shut up! The Doctor knows better than you,’ they silenced the fragile living cop.

Dr Manmohan Singh got the prime ministership on a platter, like P V Narasimha Rao, who found himself at the right spot at the right time. Rao was all packed up to go to Hyderabad after his tenure in New Delhi. Once in office, Rao turned Congress into an anti-poor, anti-secular party that it lost for ever the traditional votary of the poor and middle class, upon which it had been winning election after election since Independence.

Gunnar Myrdal begins his Asian Drama quite dramatically: The tears would come out of our eyes if you see Asian poverty … People who have never known the pangs of hunger are planning for the poor. … Starve the planners for two weeks and ask them to plan …    

Singh will take his government to precisely where Rao took it in the 90s, the political no-man’s land. Today even his own once-ardent supporters are disenchanted with him, and those who voted Congress to power are unlikely to do so next time, unless there is a leadership change.   

The disenchantment began with the Commonwealth Games, which displayed the leader’s inability to be in command. The leader being led (read misled) speaks volumes about the quality of leadership that he offers. The 2-G scam is a repeat of C’wealth Games; only the actors are different. Adarsh episode is no better. Singh’s Press Conference without the Press, so to speak, without Journalists of stature or reputation, was only a comedy show. And the worst bungling of all was the handling of Anna Hzare, who emerged as a national hero with a halo around his head!  

And now come the unkindest cut of all: the fourth hike in petrol prices in a year! One more hike in petrol prices, and Congress should be ready to sit in the opposition for five years since 2014. Economics is not all about GDPs and Moody’s rating; it is about people, it is about people’s welfare, it is about removing poverty and providing food and shelter, for which governments are elected.

Allowing corporate greed to play havoc with the lives of the poor and middle class is bad economics. The astronomical sums squandered on C’wealth Games would have been enough to save the lives of hundreds of farmers! It is futile for RBI to raise the interest rates and for Fin Min top brass to resort to fire-fighting when petrol prices that affect the prices of all other commodities are wantonly allowed to rise. That energy, cement and steel prices need to be controlled to keep inflation rates at tolerable levels is common sense.  

The necrophilic passion with which the petrol prices are hiked dashes the very hope of the heavily indebted farmer, who postpones committing suicide by a day hoping the government would rescue him out. The ghost of the farmers will visit the ballot box in 2014, and see who will have the last laugh!              

FAST AND GROW RICH

By SUNNY THOMAS

The story is told of a mystique who fasted for two weeks in a drought-hit village, and it rained cats and dogs. Every year, he visited the village and fasted; and the villagers gave him money for his fast, though they were not pretty sure whether it rained because of fasting or meteorological reasons. But it rained and money poured in. After a few years, wisdom dawned on the mystique who thought of investing the money profitably. So the mystique went to a neighbouring state and started a factory. And no more did the villagers hear of the mystique!

In this land of rishis and mystiques, fasting always pays. There is political fasting, moral fasting, television fasting, and even hybrid fasting which is all rolled into one. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh missed the bus by not fasting when he ought to have displayed the array of achievements of UPA-2. Which government since Independence has landed so many VVIPs in jail, so much so that the carping media started calling it the Republic of Tihar?    

Gandhiji fasted and prevented a communal riot in Bengal, the kind of which is described in A Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh, on the eve of Independence. No one fasted when Mumbai was rocked or when Gujarat was aflame; or when terrorists spilt innocent blood. No one fasted when over a thousand farmers committed suicide in Maharashtra, or when hundreds of girls are burnt alive for dowry. In the affluent society of Punjab and Haryana, doctors have a field day committing feticide, which is cold-blooded murder of the yet-to-be-born because they failed in the gender test. Yet no one thought of fasting! 

Truth to be told, corruption is a euphemism for Congress. What some people want to get rid of is not corruption per se but Congress. Since Hissar is not India, to expect every Congress candidate to lose his deposit in all the future elections could be wishful thinking. If crisis is an opportunity, Congress never had it so good in spite of the present embarrassment. Its survival depends on its success in controlling the spiraling prices and its package for the rural India. These done, Congress will have less to worry about 2014 when the people pass their verdict.  

The wrath of the common man is not against Suresh Kalmadi or Ashok Chavan or Spectrum Raja, but the cop and the petty bureaucrat who harass him at every opportunity. When someone told him, there is a way out, he is all excited and began rallying behind the crusader.   

Civilization marches on two legs, and so does Indian democracy. The country needs a strong BJP ready to take over, should Congress fumble. Unfortunately, promising leaders like Arun Jaitley or Sushma Swaraj who can turn the party into a 21^st century outfit, are prevented from coming to the fore. The mindset of some of its leaders is the main stumbling block for the party gaining acceptance across the spectrum. Narendra Modi’s sordid tale reminds one of Lady Macbeth’s confession:

Here’s the smell of the blood still:

all the perfumes of Arabia will not

sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh! 

What’s done cannot be undone.

       

Team Anna having tasted the power of fasting is unlikely to go back to the pavilion. The members will invent reasons to find fault with the new Lokpal Bill and be back on the streets once again. More issues will crop up, and rest assured, more street shows till the next general election. No one becomes a Gandhian by donning a Gandhi cap, which Gandhi himself did not wear but all Congressmen. But one thing is certain:

Power corrupts but not Anna Hazare

And people’s power, absolutely, but not Anna Hazare

But it might corrupt those around!