Hooray! a consortium of public sector banks led by the State Bank of India has given “in principle nod to a revised debt recast package” for the ailing — rather tail-spinning — national airline Air India, according to a relieved report in the Economic Times (February 18). Under the debt restructuring plan, the banks will immediately subscribe to new government-guaranteed bonds valued at Rs.7,400 crore, and later chip in with Rs.13,600 crore by way of a long-term loan to this airline, which has outstanding loans and dues aggregating Rs.67,520 crore. Lest the banks are nervous about increasing their exposure to this sputtering airline which has run up losses aggregating to Rs.16,000 crore, the SBI has helpfully suggested that the bonds could be subsequently disbursed among several insurance companies and mutual funds where they would be lost within their portfolios — much like sub-prime mortgages were sliced and diced and sold to mutual funds and institutional investors in the US, precipitating the global financial crisis of 2008.
But while for government and public sector banks saving Air India is axiomatic, one wonders why the public — which ultimately foots the bill of repeatedly recapitalising this overmanned and underefficient airline — is willing to do so. For over three decades, your editor has been continuously attempting (Business India, Businessworld and EW) to arouse public opinion in favour of privatising Air India, arguing it has long become the private airline of the nation’s political class.
The latest example of politicians converting this deep-in-the-red public sector airline to their own use is the outcome of an RTI (Right to Information) response by Air India whose management has confirmed that on April 25, 2010, an Airbus 319 which flies the Bangalore-Male (Maldives) route was replaced by an Airbus 320 with larger business or J class capacity, for the specific convenience and comfort of Avni the daughter and in-laws of the then Union civil aviation minister Praful Patel.
Unfortunately, the brazenness with which the neta-babu kleptocracy has bent and broken Air India to its will is the rule rather than exception. Despite this, your editor’s persistent recommendation to auction Air India and its assets and invest the proceeds in education and healthcare, has been an unheeded voice in the wilderness. The cynics are right: the supine public gets the politicians it deserves.
Porn wave protest
“Son’t you watch porn?” this was the rhetorical question Karnataka’s disgraced former chief minister and BJP strongman B.S. Yeddyurappa — who has over a dozen corruption and a murder case pending against him — asked media scribes when they sought his reaction to three of his henchmen — all ministers in the ruling BJP government of the state — watching pornography in the state legislative assembly on February 7.
Unfortunately, your editor was not present when this question was posed and remained unanswered by members of the fraternity. I would have answered: “Once in a blue (pun intended) moon and that too in the privacy of my home after locking all doors and windows and feeling guilty about it. Certainly not in the office.”
The prime argument against the huge $97 billion (Rs.485,000 crore) global adult entertainment industry is that it degrades the status of women and projects them as willing sex slaves of dominant males of the species homo sapiens. At a time when women are struggling against entrenched gender prejudices to move up the ladder in all walks of life, the global pornography tsunami threatens to reinforce the stereotype of subservient women.
Well before the Indian media woke up to the threat posed to the social order by this inherently corrupt and insidious business, EducationWorld published an indignant edit (EW August 2011) calling upon the chief justice of the United States — the epicentre of the global porn industry — to review its judgement in People vs. Freeman (1988). The US adult entertainment industry takes full advantage of this judgement to flood the world with pornography which threatens to reverse the hard won gains made by women the world over, in their struggle for equality. The EW editorial was duly forwarded to the chief justices of the American and Indian supreme courts. Tilting at the windmills perhaps, but a formal written protest nevertheless.
Lesser evil perception
No getting away from it: the Shiv Sena/BJP/RPI (Republican Party of India) coalition scored a stunning victory in the recent Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) poll, blowing away the Congress/NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) alliance which came a distant second.
This is the fourth successive term for the Shiv Sena-dominated combine in managing the country’s richest municipal corporation (annual budget: Rs.21,000 crore). The third major party in the fray, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), led by the even more sub-nationalist Raj Thackeray, estranged nephew of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, also fared surprisingly well, getting 28 of the 227 seats in the BMC.
The success of these sub-national parochial formations in capturing the municipal corporation of India’s commercial capital, is bad news for business, industry and national integration. Yet if 62 percent of Mumbai’s non-Marathi speaking population will have to endure the bullying and shake-down culture of Shiv Sena thugs, they have only themselves to blame. Because 54 percent of the city’s registered voters — especially its giddy, fun-loving middle class youth — didn’t bother to visit the polling booth.
Moreover Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s strategy of highlighting Shiv Sena corruption within the BMC proved a damp squib. With several scams like Adarsh, Commonwealth Games and 2G spectrum hanging over the Congress-led UPA government in Mumbai and Delhi, it was a case of pot calling the kettle black. Ironically the Congress campaign in the BMC elections was led by Kripashankar Singh, who according to the Bombay high court has accumulated assets valued at Rs.320 crore, after starting his working life as a vegetables vendor. As a legislator, he earned Rs.45,000 per month and had no other sources of legitimate income.
Quite obviously, the minority of Mumbai’s electorate which bothered to vote in the recently concluded BMC election, perceived the Shiv Sena mafiosi as the lesser evil.