THREE MEN IN A BOAT!

SUNNY THOMAS

Arun Jaitley does not relish making mistakes, unlike some of his party colleagues. His statements seldom carry any faux pas that needs clarification upon clarification. He commands respect across the country, more respect perhaps outside the party than inside the party that has failed to make the best use of his leadership qualities. Jaitley is Vajpayee in the making, acceptable to all sections of society and ideological spectrum. 

Akhilesh Yadav’s transformation from a gangster kingpin to a mature statesman overnight deserves our attention. It speaks of his enormous latent potential, and the advantage of a good education abroad and his innate adaptability to UP politics. He, too, does not make any faux pas, nor meddle in other people’s affairs. With UP in his pocket and with the right alliance, Delhi is not out of reach for the young Yadav.         

Rahul Gandhi is strikingly different from Jaitley and Yadav in that the latter two are cautious players while the former is prone to making mistakes. Yet Rahul commands more goodwill than Jiatley and Yadav put together, though the goodwill has yet to be translated into votes. On Rahul lies the onerous responsibility of keeping the hopes of his party alive, a party that is fast disappearing from many parts of India. It will take a miracle for Congress to retain a respectable margin in the next general election – an economic miracle where prices are brought down to a comfortable level for the middle class who determines their next rulers. Nor just prices but jobs for the millions who pass out of educational institutions and teaching shops, with hopes and fears. Not just jobs but sops for the poorest of the poor living in squalor and misery, who could be cannon fodder for Maoists. If Manmohan Singh skilfully fine-tunes his economics to make it middleclass-centric, Congress can hope for a hat-trick in 2014 (however dismal the chances may look now).  

The three men have one notable distinction: they defy Didification, Ammafication and Modification – the three mine traps of Indian democracy. All the three are very young, intelligent, articulate, and have a future vision. If only these three men could meet and blueprint a common vision for India 2022, it could signal a Renaissance in Indian politics. The destiny of this nation cannot be entrusted to one political party alone, however well-intentioned it may be. Thinking the impossible and creating the impossible is what good politics is all about. And the people should be constantly on their guard so that they don’t entrust their children’s future to a pack of demagogues and power-hungry wolves!   

Leander Paes is stabbed! Imagine this headline is screeched at you by your favourite anchor of your favourite television channel. You take it with a pinch of salt. No Indian in his right sense would venture to assault a star about to participate in Olympics. Then how come we hear of betrayal and back-stabbing of Leander Paes by his fellow tennis players? All we know is that Mahesh Bhupathi and Paes have not been at peace with each other, rather they were not eve on talking terms for several years but played their match together. Their animosity is their private affair but broadcast to the nation by TRP-hunting television channels. But what’s intriguing is the lack of enthusiasm of two tennis aces – Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza, one of whom refused directly and forthrightly while the other indirectly and forthrightly expressing her wrath at the All-India Tennis Association which has not even bothered to congratulate her on her recent victory but use players as pawns of its convenience

The Tennis Association deserves congratulations for upsetting four top players at one stroke! But one is reasonably certain that the reluctance of the three players has less to do with sports and more to do with their chemistry. Tennis buffs may recall how Monica Seles, at the height of her career, was stabbed after a game but escaped death almost miraculously. Fame and fortune invites not only bouquets but also knives!    

A Presidential ordinance asking Bhupathi and Mahesh to patch for Olympics would turn sports into politics. Good luck to Peas, good luck Bhupathi, Bopanna and Mirza!

Mrs Malaprop is looking for a tutor to teach her daughter geography so that she could get good marks in Maths. While sifting the grain, she got a kidney stone which she removed herself and put it into the dustbin. Her husband saw a gynecologist for his gastric problems. Her omniscient younger daughter failed in science because her thermometer went up due to fever. Even as you are reading this column, Mrs Malaprop is taking myopia to get her vision rectified!       

A BALLOON CALLED SANGMA!

SUNNY THOMAS

On Planet Earth, Purno Sangma is unique. A creation of expediency, driven by irrelevance, floated by a pair of chief ministers of uncontrollable ambition, and bloated by his own towering ego, Sangma flies in the air like a hot-air balloon that catches instant attention in an exhibition ground. The Hindu headline ‘After the race is over, BJP backs Sangma’ does full justice to the media armoury of humour. To get prime time on TV channels, the Brave Son of India has challenged the man whose one leg is almost in the Rashtrapathi Bhavan. The subject of debate could be `The Joy of Defection’ – a subject in which no living politician can excel Sangma!   

Many Indians believe Rahul Gandhi will be Prime Minister in 2014, though none of them have any clue how. Some have more faith in astrology than in science, while others have more faith in their own faith than either science or astrology. Electoral calculus, however, points to another direction. If Congress keeps losing elections at this rate and BJP hell-bent on projecting Narendra Modi as prime ministerial candidate even at the peril of dividing the party de facto, the newsmakers of 2014 will be Nitish Kumar and Mulayam Singh.  

A chastened Congress and a weakened BJP will not be able to meet the President without the numbers to form a government. The post-2014 absurdities could even see Jaya and Naveen blackmailing BJP into supporting one of them as PM to outsmart Nitish-Mulayam game plans. Should the imponderable happen – Modi single-handedly emerging as the winner – the Indian Republic will change forever. But demographic calculus does upset Modi hopes.

  

The year 2014 could witness the emergence of a new style of leadership, which will be more accommodative, representative and sensitive to problems of the middle class. The era of political arrogance will be a thing of the past.   

Mamata’s tornado in Delhi was the replication of her seething ambition that troubles her mind. She clearly has prime ministerial ambitions and she thought her moment of truth has arrived when the electoral verdict favoured her party. The demand for a mid-term poll baked in Kolkata is calculated to elevate Mamata from Writer’s Building to 7 Race Course! Her counterparts, Jaya and Naveen, too, have prime ministerial ambitions and the ballooning of Sagma is a clumsy manoeuvre of their overweening ambition. 

 

``You can get along very well with Abhishek Sengupta as long as you don’t criticize The Statesman,’’ said a student of Times school of Journalism, pointing to the perfect Bengali gentleman. Newspapers are a habit difficult to get out of, a matter of choice without rhyme or reason, a matter of taste without a definition. A horror tabloid (tabloid not by the size of the paper but by its content), Malayala Manorama shocks its readers every morning with blown up stories of murders and mishaps! A state where drinking is sacrosanct and even women get tipsy, a shock treatment day after day does a great service to awaken them from their dipsomania! Manorama devotes a whole page for accident deaths, which makes one wonder whether there is something horribly wrong with Kerala roads or something horribly wrong with Manorama Journalism (or both). 

   

In fairness, it must be said that Manorama reporting has a way of touching your heart with their backgrounders. An accident story captures the trauma of the relatives and brings forth a mini family saga. A success story, especially of students, will have the profile of parents and teachers, men and women you like to read about. Manorama Journalism connects and that’s the secret of its phenomenal success. 

The Hindu and The Times of India are poles apart: one is the antithesis of the other. The Hindu qualifies to be a newspaper while The Times of India is anything but a newspaper, which is the secret of its success (TOI is the world’s largest circulated newspaper ahead of USA Today, whether you like it or not). The Times of India is a market-driven newspaper while The Hindu is a value-oriented newspaper. A market-driven newspaper, in the traditional sense, is not a newspaper but globalization has sparked the evolution of newspapers. Value-oriented Journalism has disappeared from the face of the earth and the last bastion of this school is the southern giant that defies evolution. 

         

Will smart phones replace newspapers, considering their amazing popularity and power of addiction? News stories written in two or three lines with jingle-bells chiming at the background, or even news stories composed as songs at the click of a mouse and the young boys and girls glued to smart phones will indeed redefine Journalism. Journalists beware!       

    

A SUITABLE BOY!

SUNNY THOMAS

You know why the British changed the capital from Calcutta to Delhi? The streets of Calcutta were full of (future) Mamata Banerjees that the far-sighted British thought it wise to shift the capital. Notwithstanding the British decision, Mamata Banerjee flew to Delhi to drop a bomb at 10 Janpath but it turned out to be a damp squib!

Compare the dignity with which Sonia Gandhi announced the name of the most Suitable Boy and the grace with which Pranab Mukherjee accepted the proposal. In politics, breed is not a disqualification but could be an asset. Cutting across party lines, Dada commands respect; respect not only of the species of politicians but all Indians across the nation. Nehru used Lal Bahadur Shastri as his emissary to resolve naughty political problems, just the way Sonia Gandhi used Pranab the Peacemaker. And finally, peacemakers always inherit the earth.  

The saddest chapter in the high drama is the dragging in of Abdul Kalam’s name. Those who did it had no regard for his reputation or human sensibilities. Like the cave man sending his stone missiles, they used Kalam in the same savagery; the only difference, they did it in the 21^st century while the caveman did it in his time, not known for civilization.    

Your decisions speak of your leadership qualities. The decision of the two chief ministers who proposed Purno Sangma’s name – the name of someone with dubious defection record – shows lack of vision and the parochial mindset in which regional satraps are trapped in.

The most eminent of India Presidents was Dr S. Radhakrishnan of Oxford fame. Incidentally, he was also the former Vice-Chancellor of Benarus Hindu University and the Ambassador of Enlightened Hinduism. The authority of Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President of the Indian Republic, was unique. He was elected against Jawaharlal Nehru’s wishes because Nehru wanted C Rajagopalachari to be the first President. Congress party strongman Sardar Patel had his way and ensured Dr Rajendra Prasad’s victory.

Nehru’s eloquence was intimidating even for British Viceroys (like Linlithgow), and Rajen Babu (as the first President was endearingly called) chose to write to Nehru rather than meet him face to face, even though Nehru briefed the President every Monday morning on the state of the nation. Prasad was an ultra conservative and Nehru a liberal, and differences are bound to come up. But they debated among themselves through letters, of course, and arrived at a consensus on most of the issues. But Nehru always paid the respect that is due to the President, notwithstanding his reputation as a benevolent dictator.   

After Dr Zakir Husain, there was an erosion in the status of the President which has now come to be accepted, partly because the Presidents were handpicked. Most Presidents enjoyed the palatial mansion and the ceremonial trappings that they chose not to meddle with politics or politicians. President Pratibha Patil was at once a triumph of symbolism and hopes raised but not lived up to, while President Abdul Kalam was vision personified, who inspired and ignited young minds. But none showed greater statesmanship than Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, the grand old Congressman raised to the Presidency.

Global credit rating agencies are like alligators in the deep, pulling down men in water to drown and feast on them. They are basically discredit agencies lying in wait to discredit global economies – true to their operational style, the Standard and Poor’s downgraded the American economy and now published a damaging report on the Indian economy. That the rich man’s toilet is more important than the poor man’s food is in essence the spirit of the economic reforms as practised by their exponents in India and their foreign patrons like S & P.  

         

   

WIN VISHY WIN 

SUNNY THOMAS

What is success?

To some, going to Tihar jail and coming out on bail to a grand reception is success. Building monuments and their own statues across the nation to the aesthetically-minded is success. To the flaming patriots, an edifice to Kargil martyrs even in the form of a housing complex is success. Sports freaks love to organize Commonwealth Games and bank-roll money to script their success. Organizing a thorough cultural cleansing and escaping the arm of the law is deemed by some as the ultimate success story.

But to Bill Gates and Viswanathan Anand , success is a matter of brains, not brawns. Any award given to Anand will be an honour for the award, rather than for the world chess champion – except the Bharat Ratna! By winning the fifth time, he has reminded the world chess buffs that the game originated in India, once known as Chaturang (Square Game), but was taken to Persia, from where the Arab traders carried it to Europe, who thought it their monopoly. Anand has now brought the glory back to where it belongs.

With his latest victory, Viswanathan Anand – acknowledged the most versatile player – joins the all-time greats like Garry Kasparov, the brilliant tactician, Bobby Fischer, the superb strategist, Jose Kapablanca, the Perfect Chess Machine, Alexander Alekhine, the thunderstorm, Anatoly Karpov, who grinds his opponent to dust on the first error, Emmanuel Lasker, the genius of endgame, Vladmir Kramnik, the Iceman, Mikhail Botvinnik, the insightful, and Mikhail Tal, the sacrificial stylist.

Meteoric has been Anand’s rise: from a National Sub-Junior Chess Champion at 14, (1983) to an International Master at the age of 15, to a National Chess Champion at 16, and World Junior Chess Champion at 18, he has travelled miles on the fast track; won  Padma Shri when he was still 18; and became  the first recipient of Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, India’s highest sporting honor, in 1991–92.

After several near misses, he won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000 at Tehran, and in 2007 became World Champion again in Mexico City. He repeated the performance in 2008, 2010 and 2012 to be a five-time champion.

Home proved the best school for Anand. To have a meritorious ex-General Manager, Viswanathan Iyer of Southern Railway, as his father and a Chess buff Susheela as his mother, who along with her friend Deepa Ramakrishnan groomed Anand is the best thing that has happened during his fledgling days. Perhaps, he couldn’t have asked for anything better.

From Chennai to Moscow, it is a long drive even by road; and by the professional route, it is much longer, bent and steep.

“For me, the number has been irrelevant. I simply want to enjoy playing chess…But winning in Moscow meant a lot more emotionally,’’ he said immediately after his 2012 win.

When a pugilist meets a chess grandmaster, what do they discuss? Boxing or chess? Fortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin knew enough about chess to keep their tea session interesting.

Analyzing his performance later, the Grand Master said, “We worked very hard and developed some thoughts. I had several systems prepared with black and white. You always had to start with something new.’’

Creativity is the key to success anywhere in the world and in any field. And Anand has proved it once again!

Ralph Waldo Emerson has defined success as,

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.

(Some say the quote is wrongly attributed to Emerson).

Gen V K Singh has decided to join Ramdev! Said the wag, he should have joined Ramdev before joining the Indian Army. What do you expect from a man who could not get his own date of birth corrected, or win back the honour from the Supreme Court, or who was seen vindictive to some of his own colleagues? Long at last, the general is in the right company.

RUPEE FALLS WHILE ANNA FIDDLES!

SUNNY THOMAS

Absolutely absurd! The fall of the rupee has nothing to do with Anna’s fasting. But as if by a conspiracy of circumstances, both happened to make news almost the same time. Team Anna’s irresistible desire to occupy PMO without an election is taking all shapes and dimensions. But the Indian Constitution has no provision for a self-appointed Gandhian to take over the reins of the country via television channels.

Can you think of someone who promised so much and delivered so little as Anna, once deemed a new avatar of Gandhi! His thunder, without wisdom and power, sounds hollow; his utterances have the ring of the Greek oracle, but without its prophetic quality. The immortal Charlie Chaplin made his audience laugh because of the incongruity of his comedy shows: the pretensions and ground reality that Anna present creates a ripple effect that could make him immortal, too!

Between market failures and government failures, you have nothing to choose from. They are the two sides of the falling rupee. Money, the missing link between macroeconomics and microeconomics, is the least understood of commodity.

The running inflation over the last one year has deprived the middle class of their purchasing power. People don’t buy when they have no money to buy, and the domestic demand falls. When no one buys automobiles, (dream) houses, refrigerators, chocolates and ice-creams, the producers whittle down their production. And inevitably, the industrial production comes down.  Precisely then, the Doctor prescribes a steep hike in petrol prices, and wonders what on earth has the market done to the economy!

When exports are shrinking, trade deficit is widening, budget deficit yawning, the rupee can only plunge. Elementary, Dr Manmohan Singh! The startling revelation by Vayalar Ravi and A K Antony that contrary to public perception, the oil companies have been making profits, not losses, should present us the larger picture. Almost everyone, from Suresh Kalmadi to Ashok Chavan to oil companies seems to be misleading poor Manmohan Singh who is obsessed with a 10% growth rate. 

On the battlefield, Napoleon felt devilishly thirsty and asked for a jug of water. As he lifted the jar, he saw a dying soldier looking longingly at the jar. Like a true leader, Napoleon commanded, ``Give him the water, his need is greater’’.    

If you say, ``The greed of the multinationals is greater than the need of the crushed middle class,’’ you got it right. Now you know why the rupee is falling!

``My greatest dream in life is to become a trade union leader and lead a strike,’’ said the 12-year-old Appu Kuttan, studying in a government school in Kochi! Teenagers living in metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore or Chennai have better career sense and aspirations because of their exposure.  

Non-Metro teenagers, especially from the neglected sector, choose the wrong role models, grow up misguided and become cannon fodder for violent ideologies that cast a spell over them. Education has imparted little enlightenment or a vision to meet the future challenges of life. Most of them pass out with no idea what to do with their lives! 

  

Why, in law-abiding Chennai, a student stabbed to death his teacher (Uma Maheswari, 39) because she reprimanded him the previous day. The catalogue of crimes in God’s own country makes a horror reading: a lady doctor (Tinku Edwin) who refused to treat a man was stabbed ten times in Thrissur; a 35-year-old woman (Smitha) returning home from work at 7 pm was dragged to a marshy place, raped and left to die in Kayamkulam; a young girl, the only bread winner of her poor family (Soumya, 24), was pushed out of the ladies’ compartment, raped and left to die in a jungle. Hiring `contract killers’ to eliminate business and political rivals is in keeping with the violent political system of Kerala. It beats even Devil’s own record when a senior Marxist party member made a public statement admitting the party’s role in plotting a series of political murders.

L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj were not seen at the BJP rally while Arvind Kejriwal was untraceable at the latter half the Jantar Mantar road show. But don’t read too much into the misses. They were just on casual leave!        

THE BEAST OF BURDEN!

SUNNY THOMAS

Precisely when S Jaipal Reddy crushed the backbone of the middle class by hiking the petrol prices by Rs 7.5 a liter, deafening cheers rose from the other India – the India of investors, stock market players, and the super rich. The stock market became buoyant and bounced 1.8% the next day. Foreign investors packing to go for better destinations stay put their flight. The Wall Street Journal critical of India’s reforms turned India-friendly once again. The World Bank and IMF sent flowers and bouquet to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh!

Now you know why our farmers commit suicide in their hordes? They are robbed of all their entitlements, like power, irrigation and fertilizer subsidies. They are deprived of markets and a fair deal so much so that even a campaigner like Rahul Gandhi stumbled upon heaps and heaps of discarded surplus produce like potatoes and tomatoes for want of marketing network while in the metros the price of these produce skyrocket. Any pro-poor, pro-farmer gesture by the government is instantly termed ``policy paralysis’’ which the brainless breed of scribes add to their vocabulary, understanding little they are in no-man’s wonderland!  

In the 1950s and 60s, agriculture was at the heart of the Prime Minister’s policy decisions. Slowly the foreign investors hijacked that sacred space, and today the flight of foreign capital alarms the government more than the death of a hundred farmers. Since the government does not run on bullock cart wheels, the farmers count for little and are treated like cattle to be butchered after their productive season – which is voting time! Of course, anyone with a basic understanding of economics will recognize the value of foreign investors to an economy. Admitted that India’s competitive edge comes from foreign investor confidence. But that’s no reason why you should let the farmers die the most ghastly death.  

The ethics of good governance dictates that a government elected by the people should make life easier (not harsher) for the people. Bad economics penalizes people, forcing them to tighten their belts till it breaks. The conundrum of bad economics is that it is made by good economists bereft of the human touch. Dr Manmohan Singh does not have the faintest idea how many million middle class homes are blighted by his price lash! Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia the other day cracked a joke in right earnest while defining the poverty line, but people started attacking his joke.   

Should the people of Athens live in misery because of an economic fad held on tenaciously by German Chancellor Angela Merkel? Policy makers have the power to inflict pain on people who have done them no wrong, and go scot-free! The Greek lessons are always an education to the civilized world. But this time around, it is not about Homer and Socrates and Pythagoras but about how to avoid the mistakes of a floundering Greek economy.  

The Greek economy was one of the fastest growing economies in the euro zone from 2000 to 2007. Since Restoration of Democracy in 1974, large public deficits are a feature of Greek social model. Successive Greek governments have, to woo the Left-leaning population, ran huge deficits to finance public sector jobs, pensions and other social benefits. Since 1994, the debt-GDP ratio remained above 94%, and during the global meltdown it crossed the maximum sustainable level of 120%, and now according to some estimate is poised to hit the unsustainable level of 198%.   

Two of the country’s largest industries are tourism and shipping, both susceptible to global meltdown. Another major problem Greece faces is tax evasion to the tune of $20 billion a year! Worse still, a stunning disclosure was made that Greece has been paying Goldman Sachs hundreds of millions of dollars in fees since 2001 to hide the actual level of borrowing. 

Every move by the new French President Francois Hollande is being scrutinized by friends and foes alike. Hollande displayed genuine leadership in foreign policy when he decided to call it a day in Afghanistan, vowing to bring back his troops by year-end, 24 months ahead of the Coalition deadline. He is convinced that a prolonged stay would achieve nothing and in fact derail whatever has been achieved in terms of security and reconstruction of Afghanistan. He said so bluntly at the NATO summit at Chicago.  

Hollande’s euro initiative has sent jitters among private investors who have been fishing in troubled waters. His proposal for pan-European bonds to generate liquidity for banks is the last thing they want to hear. But already he has emerged as the star of attraction eclipsing the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, known as austerity Merkel. Hollande proposed that growth, not austerity, should be the goal of euro economies, galvanizing the enthusiasm of European leaders.   

But you can’t sell surprises to Angela who can peddle in greater surprises. A staunch supporter of the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, known for hectoring his way around, overnight she turned his bitter critic and successor. After a year-long campaign for nuclear energy, Angela bedeviled her critics by advocating a Nuclear-free Germany, robbing them of their electoral plank. Now she would be the first to desert the austerity boat and row with Hollande on the growth boat just floated. Angela is ever the winner because she is always on the winning side!  

Purno Sangma is seen mooning with Jayalalithaa and Navin Patnaik. He is hoping to become the Rashtrapathi by gathering defectors. To Sangma, every politician is a potential defector, like himself. In one of the most hilarious interviews ever with an Indian politician, Arnab Goswami (then in his ancestral home NDTV), used a devastating punch line: ``So Mr Sangma, there is no guarantee that you will not defect again in the next six months!’’ With consummate skill, the broadcaster stripped Sangma naked with his punch line, repeating it thrice, and finally ending it with dramatic effect. The same Sangma is in the ring once again. The irony is his own daughter cannot campaign for him, since she is in Dr Manmohan Singh’s cabinet, unless she follows in her father’s footsteps!      

MAHARAJA’S MISERY!

SUNNY THOMAS

When pilots, duty-bound to fly aircraft strike work and disrupt your flight schedule, you might call it treason. And when doctors, duty-bound to save life go on strike and kill the poorest of the poor, you call it treason, too. But when Parliamentarians disrupt Parliament and write their Script of Disruption, which the rest of the nation enacts, would you call it treason?

To recapitulate the Maharaja’s misery is to trace the glory that was Air India under JRD Tata, its spectacular growth in fleet and crew, its monumental mismanagement, and its hijacking and grounding of flights by a bunch of irresponsible pilots.  

It is difficult to believe that Air India started its operation from a palm-thatched hut at Juhu aerodrome. The airline then had just one pilot, two apprentice mechanics and two piston-engine aircraft. The year was 1932 and it was known as Tata Airlines.

After World War II, the aviation industry across the world started expanding. In 1946 Tata Airlines became a public limited company and in 1948 was rechristened as Air India. JRD was the first Indian to pass the pilot’s examination, and his historic flying from Karachi to Juhu airport on October 15, 1932, was celebrated in the aviation history.   

JRD was a charismatic person who believed that every obstacle is an opportunity. Groomed by a Scottish business leader, John Peterson, who headed Tata Sons after his tenure in Indian Civil Service, the young Tata was educated in France, Japan and England, imbibing the virtues of all the cultures. However, he had one regret in life that he could not take an engineering degree from Cambridge, as his father wanted him back home.  

When JRD was 22, his father died, and ever since then he was on the board of Tata & Sons.  He was born in Paris because his mother Suzanne (`Sooni’) was a French national, but at the age of 25 he surrendered his French citizenship and started devoting himself to building Modern India, with a strong industrial foundation. 

The Golden Age of Air India was indeed JRD’s tenure as Chairman. But in 1977 when Morarjee Desai became Prime Minister, he was not happy with Tata and wanted him replaced. From then on, it was a story of steady decline for the airlines, which showed itself from time to time, though on paper business was growing. 

Vir Sanghvi, the former editor of The Hindustan Times, describes the moment thus: Being Morarji Desai –  by which I mean, a bit of a crank and a nutcase – he chose not just to punish JRD but also to punish Air India. So he sacked JRD as Chairman of Air India… Once JRD went, the babus moved in. Air India became a plaything of the civil aviation ministry and the handmaiden of the government, used and abused by ministers and bureaucrats. (JRD himself accepted only Re 1 a year as salary).  

The merger of Air India with the loss-making Indian Airlines was a fatal mistake. Instead of saving the sick airline, both airlines became sick and a national liability. The combined loss of Air India and Indian Airlines touched Rs 7.7 billion in March 2007, which went up to Rs 72 billion in March 2009.

In 2011, the airline missed salary payments and interest payments (for June, July, August) to creditors like State Bank of India, inviting Moody’s warning. Its decision to buy 111 new aircraft as part of the modernization drive has put Air India deep in the red.

The airline’s poor customer care and abysmal passenger rating (4.1 out of 10) is indefensible. It tells a tale of low morale and dismal management. Already, the government squandered Rs 32 billion in April 2009 and another Rs 67.5 billion in March 2012, double the government budget for new hospitals in the last three years!

It is time the government realized that the job of the government is not to run airlines but to run the government efficiently. Improve the plight of government hospitals in the country, open more rural health centres, improve the quality of primary education, and take care of the malnourished, whose population puts India in a dubious first – which India can do without.  

The pilots, by any stretch of imagination, are not malnourished! Robbing India’s malnourished to pay the pilots who don’t fly their aircraft is a crime we must put an end to immediately.   

 The government has only two options: sell the aircraft to a consortium of industrialists or even to foreign players who can run the airlines creditably; or sack all the pilots who have gone on strike three times in two years, and appoint a Chairman who could be a former pilot or someone who knows how to run the aviation business profitably (even the private airline owners who do a meritorious job could be considered).    

It is indeed time the government ended the Maharaja’s misery!