Bad Mileage

The other serious felony by our ATC staffers is to ask the pilots to start their engines when knowing that the long queue ahead is going to keep the aircraft from even moving around the taxiway. The aircraft are made to wait for half hour or so while they continue to burn fuel in their engines before they are cleared to take off. Why can’t we get boarding schedules to align with the aircraft’s place in the take-off queue, so that passengers board the aircraft just as it is about to be cleared for take-off?

Aviation fuel is the most expensive of all fuels and thousands of gallons of it worth lakhs of dollars are being burnt to waste everyday on Indian airports. Kingfisher’s Vijay Mallya says he cannot call his airline a low-cost airline any longer because in the last four months, his aircrafts made to wait in queues have burnt up an additional Rs 50 crore worth of fuel, something which he had failed to factor in at the time of the airline launch. Airlines are bleeding and precious foreign exchange is being literally blown away, and yet nobody is paying any heed.

The way the civil aviation sector is growing, it’s not hard to imagine how the scenario will pan out after more airlines start or expand their operations. Most international airlines have already sent requests to increase the number of sorties they make to India. Our airport infrastructure is crumbling under the weight of our ambitious civil aviation policy.

Breaking Hoaxes

Yellow is fast becoming the colour of Indian electronic journalism. Hard news are being sidelined even as people like Kunji Lal, a non-descript astrologer from a remote village are able to take two national news channels hostage for hours. Lal predicted his own death at a precise time last week and our news channels went hysterical; putting all news on hold while relentlessly broadcasting what were deemed to be last few hours of an otherwise healthy old man. Unfortunately for them, the man proved a fraud and lived past his deadline to the channels’ embarrassment.

The incident was no less amusing than it was tragic. Indian electronic journalism has got so sensitive to TRPs that it is prepared to disregard all notions of what constitutes news as long as viewers are attracted. Journalists are nosing for news in smallest and most inane of incidents as suggested by a recent flurry of such reports. Being voyeuristic in nature, such news serves no public purpose. The viewers are being robbed of serious news while the news channels are competing with entertainment channels in every sense of the term. Mass media being a sensitive business, I am worried this dumbing down of news might not go unnoticed and it would be a tragedy if the government is forced to appoint a content regulator for the electronic media.

Handling Craft

The recently-concluded Indian Handicrafts and Gifts Fair at Pragati Maidan was an eye opening affair. From quality to sheer variety, the range of products displayed on hundreds of stalls was overwhelming. Many products I came across could surpass their international counterparts on any standards, be it innovative designs or fine workmanship. Unfortunately the fair solicited foreign buyers only; a tragedy since it is we Indians who mostly pick these products at inflated prices on our trips abroad. These products could easily be marketed to upper and middle class Indians in India, which would have been a boon to the promising yet deeply-fragmented handicraft industry. In any case, the ministries of textiles and commerce also should come out in support and give top priority to the industry with all possible incentives. It also makes sense to go sell at buyer’s doorstep. We must hold similar exhibitions in foreign countries regularly. With government support and a little application of basic marketing principles, Indian handicrafts could easily storm the world markets, bringing billions of dollars for our artists and exporters in return.

The writer is a Congress MP from the Rajya Sabha. Send him your feedback at shuklarajeev@gmail.com