Air India heads home !

Air India has finally found a new (old) home. The home is the Tatas. Air India as an airline has great potential. But potential is like oil present in Venezuela. Despite having the highest oil reserve, Venezuela is one of the poorest countries of the world. Despite having the best parking slots, best international routes and best domestic routes, Air India continued to bleed. Since 2009-10, the taxpayers of India have footed >1 lakh crore rupees into running the airline.

>1 lakh crore of taxpayers money was wasted for an airline in a country which still has millions under poverty. The irony is that this has happened when communists were in power along with the socialist Congress from 2004-08 period, socialist Congress from 2009-14 and conservatives BJP govt from 2014-21. So all the three, communists, socialists and conservatives agreed on one thing, to keep the airline running. Thankfully, the conservative govt has acted and god rid of the airline which the govt of India is just not capable of running.

Air India is one of the long list of Public Sector Units which desperately need professional management to create organizations of the future. Organizations which not only serve few bureaucrats and politicians, but the greater country as a whole. Air India, which hopefully will be better managed by the Tata's will give lower prices to enable many Indians to fly. Profits will get generated, on which taxes will be paid, which will help in lifting millions out of poverty.

It is not difficult to understand what went wrong with Air India. Bureaucrats who have no business of running business were running an airline. They did not have the critical expertise to manage a company and especially in a competitive industry like airlines. Air India kept losing money and the tax payers kept footing the bill. Thus the classical toxic cycle of inefficient business, high price to customers and losses at the year end continued.

We have other companies like BPCL up for strategic sale and listing of LIC in the upcoming 6 months. This will help the govt get about 1.75 lakh crores of money to finance CAPEX cycle for the country. I welcome this news with positive