Plane truths

One wonders over the total ineptitude of the previous government, which in its six years of rule was not able to sanction purchase of new aircraft so badly needed for the next phase of the carrier’s growth. In the last meeting of the consultative committee for Ministry of Civil Aviation, members asked current minister Praful Patel about the reasons for such a delayed decision. Indeed the sanction has come within months of his assuming office.

So it seems, even if unfortunately, that the NDA government was more keen on purchasing VVIP aircraft to facilitate travel for its high-flying ministers. The current government is still to foot a large portion of the Rs 1,000-crore bill raised by the NDA government on the purchase of 5 VVIP aircraft, when ironically the same NDA government chose to look elsewhere to repeated demands for approval of fleet expansion.

Though IA has managed to put up a spirited fight against private competition and is improving by leaps and bounds, the woes of the other national carrier, Air India, seem nowhere to end.

In domestic skies, we can now safely assert that our domestic airlines can compete favourably with most of the American airlines. The service levels are fast improving and you can notice the change in all departments—be it in-flight service or schedule maintenance. The gains are coming too with an increase in passenger load to the tune of 4,000 passengers per day in Indian airlines. The IA story is well on its way to demonstrate once again that a fine balance of government freedom coupled with excellent management can work wonders with a PSU, never mind how spirited the competition.

BJP’s histrionics

What Jayalalithaa is doing to the Shankaracharya is certainly not right. His stature demands better treatment and the least she could do was to put him up in a guest-house, rather than make him suffer in a jail. Even L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were given house arrest in a guest-house at the time of their arrest by the Narasimha Rao government. But Jayalalithaa is in no mood to relent, despite the fact that even the PM has spoken.

It is further interesting to note the antics of Jaya’s election ally BJP’s henchmen. Senior BJP leaders are observing fast and holding an agitation at Janpath in New Delhi, when what they really needed to do was to try these stunts outside the imposing gates of Poes Garden in Chennai, the residence of Jayalalithaa, if they were really concerned about a solution to the impasse. But no, why would they want to miss an opportunity to play their Hindutva card at the centrestage and garner useful political mileage?

In fact, no agitation is needed that badly. For, it wasn’t long ago when BJP leaders and George Fernandes asserted solidarity with Jayalalithaa and talked about a joint fight against the Congress, and the Tamil Nadu CM spoke out against Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin. One just wonders if only they had used their good offices with the lady and managed to secure a better treatment to the holy man.

I therefore humbly request Atal Behari Vajpayee, Advani, Joshi and Fernandes to work with their friend in Chennai, rather than stooping down to a token protest in the name of dharna.

Manmohan’s mission

That Manmohan Singh is not a clever politician has been a hot topic of debate ever since he became the Prime Minister. But what nobody doubts is the abilities of Manmohan Singh the administrator. And the last six months have thrown up ample evidence that the highest administrative post in India is not going to bog down Singh from pushing through his reformist agenda, whose biggest target of late has been the bureaucracy.

When he is not busy issuing advisories to ministries and departments, he is either proposing ideas like direct intake of school passouts into IAS, or even setting the stage for a bureaucratic code of conduct. In a bid to attack slackening of work at the highest level, he’s summoned secretaries of ministries to speak to him directly if a situation demands so. And chief secretaries of state and union territories were advised to show structural improvements in government work within two years.

Singh even went on to revive a Nehruvian tradition of the PM writing to state chief ministers. And the topic of his first letter was very predictable: urging his state counterparts to remove the delays and impediments that development programmes face at implementation level.

Singh is certainly the most low-profile prime minister the country has ever seen, and so long as he can continue to chip away at bureaucratic apathy, nobody should be complaining.