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Journalism of Courage
They are at it again. At midnight, the recalcitrant wing — air-traffic controllers — of the Airports (Agitations) Authority of India will strike again, leaving airports, airlines and passengers alike in the lurch. They have no case, none whatsoever. They won a new wage agreement in November. To refresh their conveniently short memories, they also promised at the time not to resort to industrial action to enforce their demands. Their angst is related to the fear of AAI employees closing the pay gap with them. As to their demand about the implementation of the report on air safety, they have a point. But including this in their otherwise wholly self-serving agenda in the hope of acquiring some legitimacy should fool no one. The ATCs’ hearts are bleeding not for the flying public — or they would not put them to such trouble — but for their own purses. In any case, a strike is no solution. As for the AAI, it can only be an object of pity for saying that the report cannot be implemented unless it is firstaccepted by the government. Air disasters will not await bureaucratic whim. Even in an environment where every institution is politicising every little thing, it is hard to see how the adoption of a report on air safety could be politicised.
That said, the ATCs deserve to be ruthlessly crushed. The key to successful industrial negotiations is for unions to handle their power with responsibility. The ATCs obviously do not think so. What is more, the government has no business to let them get away with it. Why should it be prepared to negotiate with a bunch — a small bunch at that — of employees with high nuisance value who lack the honour to keep their own word that they will not strike? What example will this set to unions elsewhere? This wimpish government already has done incalculable economic and industrial relations damage by meekly conceding outlandish demands here, there and everywhere. What it is now allowing to happen under its very nose does not justify India being described even as a functioninganarchy: “functioning” is too flattering an epithet. It highlights the worst things in the system: indiscipline, an exaggerated sense of rights without the faintest notion that they come with responsibility, a tendency to bully the weak and kowtow before the strong, and the utter failure of government to enforce its will, if it can be said to have one.
Indeed, the ATCs’ hitherto unchallenged action neatly sums up the notion of chaos in government — and presents this unlovely visage to the world. What sort of government cannot, or will not, deal sternly with a diminutive number of people who have not a leg to stand upon and who wreak extreme and repeated havoc? Never much of a “functioning” government, this caretaker regime now seeks to hide behind its caretaker status in making no worthwhile effort to address this problem, or any other. Considering that it boasts a civil aviation minister who has had his way in every possible objectionable whim, the plea of helplessness does not wash. If a caretakergovernment follows so faithfully the idea that governance is not its mandate, perhaps it should also be told that, in that case, it may no longer enjoy the perks of office which it has had no qualms in accepting.
