Turmoil in Air India – A National Carrier?

Air India, whether national carrier or not, but is a symbol of Indian Economy & our policy of middle path with combination of government & private investments working alongside and compliment to each other. India is a socialist nation as per the preamble of our constitution. So we are neither capitalist nor communist but follow a middle economic approach a genuine mixture of two ingredients in right proportions.

As much as the private airlines are necessary for our kind of economy, so much the government one(s) to control business malpractices and economical monopoly. They are also necessary so that government, through them implement their people centric policies.

However we don’t need a government carrier which keeps on functioning like typical government department of a third world country (!) We need that its management, functionality, services and handling of issues should be at par with any top rated private limited.

If common taxpayers are investors, representing in form of govt, they need returns from their investment like anyone else want from his portfolio. We couldn’t blindly bear the losses for infinite period. In that case there is only resort of scrapping the Non Performing Assets.

But first we need to give this identity a chance to implement certain measure to control the leakage. As a very first step, AI needs to monitor its expenditures. Financial transparency should have to be established in all form of dealing from fuel to maintenance or new purchase to talent upgradation.

As a very necessary step, all kind of free soaps to Politicos & Bureaucrats need to be stopped at once. Since there is market listing of company too, no government representative has any right to claim benefit (atleast visible ones) from it. Though it is hard & harsh step for government but it has to be taken to save the identity itself.

Then there should be a genuine rating system for all Management & Employees based upon the performance. Base upon this rating salary and job rationalization should be there. It should have to respect the talent and brought it forward to provide leadership.

In the end, though we can’t deny the right of union/association to employees but strike shouldn’t be the way to represent you grievances or protest. There might be hundreds of reasons for disagreement between management & employees but why a common passenger (a taxpayer) would have suffer (who is investor too) for differences between these two parties?

If Air India is national carrier then it has to bear the burden of national duty in addition to maintaining the proper functioning as an enterprise. The resort of ESMA as last option can be & should have to be used to control this kind of disfunctioning to save the interests of common man in such fiascos.