National Carrier national shame!

.. From the grand old days of Maharaja, Air India has fallen from grace thanks to the people at the helm. It is being run as some personal property. Thanks to successive CMDs mostly from the IAS cadre, they have allowed rot to set in. The previous CMD Mr Tulsi Das is apparently running a private enterprise to provide expat pilots and minting money in the process. All this while hundreds of our own desi pilots are waiting in the wings. What else do you expect babus to do except mis managing and also making money.

Why on earth do we think that an IAS can do anything and run anything. There are enough and more qualified and experienced people from the concerned field who would understand the nuances of running a specialised industry that has to compete with the best from the private industry. It takes years to understand the job, and here an IAS Babu lands up from Food or Agriculture ministry or coal ministry and suddenly is running an airline industry which requires expertise and imagination ... and then you have the Government pumping in money to bail out an inefficient national carrier thanks to successive Babus making a mess of it all.

Praful Patel is all noise and no deeds. When there was an upswing a couple of years ago, he seemed to be taking all the credit for the upward sloping graphs.... Today, he says it is for the AI to manage their own affairs while they are in the red. The merger of the AI and IA, creation of some cocktail called Air India Express and some other half baked solutions have all back fired. NACIL is in the red and the bosses are red faced but continue to treat a national carrier as their private property.

Let us get the best man for the job from the specific industry . It requires professional skills, understanding and commitment. The two year stint that an IAS officer does today is just adequate to understand the specialist requirements. How many Heads from the Administrative service have rolled for inefficiency? When it comes to passing the blame, it is passed downstream.

At the top level, the now a standard gimmick of offering to resign (ala Praful Patil, ala Chidambaram ) instead of actual resigning shows where the true intentions lie. Such action by politicians and ministers are revolting to say the least. Remember how all the DMK members gave their resignation letters to MK. Tamasha chal raha hai idar.