Maharaja-sized bungle

The story of the carpet that Air-India slipped on, which this newspaper carried on Wednesday, epitomises all that is wrong with an instituti...

The story of the carpet that Air-India slipped on, which this newspaper carried on Wednesday, epitomises all that is wrong with an institution which is currently considering an expensive expansion, estimated at 1.5 billion. An institution that is presently sitting on an accumulated loss of Rs 1,000 crore. An institution with an unwieldy work force of 22,000 and, consequently, an enormous wage bill. An institution with an ageing fleet 8212; some 10 aircraft of its total stable of 28 are currently under repairs, which has resulted in the cancellation of 22 of its flights.

Over the years this organisation that once symbolised national pride and ambition has, through an unedifying combination of abysmal management practices, political interference of the most destructive kind and insidious deal-making, been rendered almost comatose; a truly Maharaja-sized embarrassment.

It is a familiar trajectory, really, and one that has marked the fate of many a public enterprise in this country. Air-India watchers believe the real decline began in the early 1990s, helped in some measure by a disastrous productivity-linked wage agreement and high depreciation costs.

By the late nineties, the airline8217;s market share had halved, and the number of destinations it flew to had also shrunk visibly 8212; from 32 in the eighties to 19 in the nineties.

Unfortunately, efforts made to disinvest the leviathan kept hitting air-pockets, because of the lack of political will and a series of controversies, of which the well-publicised sacking of an Air-India managing director by the then Union minister of aviation was just one instance.

As all Air-India8217;s horses and all Air-India8217;s men meet at Kochi to discuss ways on how to put this humpty-dumpty together again, the question that arises in the mind of the layperson is simply this: what guarantee is there that these radical and costly plans to ensure that the airline flies as a viable entity will actually succeed? The argument for investing in the airline is that unless Air-India expands its fleet urgently there is no way it can utilise its bilaterals and fight for a place in the universe of international air travel.

Therefore, even the money acquired through disinvesting the Hotel Corporation of India is now to be ploughed into the national carrier, according to the Union minister of civil aviation. The hope is that this will provide Air-India with the right financial base to take off to that exciting destination called financial viability 8212; and, dare we say, profits. But will that, indeed, happen, or will it be yet another case of money going down Air-India8217;s inexhaustible drain? This, ultimately, is the 1.5 billion dollar question.