If Vijay Mallya is responsible, why not bureaucrats managing Air India? Mohandas Pai rakes up AI’s Rs 30,000 crore loss

AMID the row over Kingfisher Airlines’ boss Vijay Mallya’s leaving the country in the middle of a loan default investigation, former Infosys honcho TV Mohandas Pai on Sunday kicked up a fresh issue as he asked why the people managing Air India were not held accountable for ₹30,000 crore losses, just as Mallya is being probed for losses in Kingfisher Airlines? Though Pai, who was HR head in Infosys and is currently chairman of Manipal Education, has not named anyone in the state-run airline, it’s well known that the loss-making Air India has been managed by bureaucrats, mostly IAS officers. The current CMD Ashwani Lohani is however not an IAS, but a...

Jadhav’s Air India may turn a test flight for IAS’ claims on administration skill

IF Air India chairman Arvind Jadhav fails to engineer a turnaround of India’s national carrier, it would impact less of the political career of NCP leader and Union aviation minister Praful Patel but more of the claims of IAS officers that magic rules of administration are applicable from running a district or a department to a complex behemoth like Air India. As 5000 passengers including a sizeable number of government officers got stranded during the recent two-day long flash strike just after the Mangalore air crash, Jadhav was more a talking point in corridors of power than those who were cabinet secretary probables. Many officers even began to introspect whether an IAS officer should head Air India at all?

Those who know 1978 batch Karnataka cadre IAS Jhadav from close quarters claim he is a tough, no non-sense administrator who means business. The sacking of AI employees post strike and de-recognition of two trade unions displayed a tough Air India management headed by Jadhav this time round, but his one-year-long journey of piloting the debt-ridden and strike-infested airline has largely been a turbulent one with no immediate sign of Maharaja’s recovery. Some even questioned whether Jadhav was qualified at all to take up the assignment? That he is an MBA from an Australian University and earlier served as MD in two organizations --- Karnataka Silk Marketing Board and Mysore Minerals Ltd., might have rightly impressed the selectors, but the question today is much bigger --- whether Air India should be headed by a professional CEO with a vast aviation knowledge and experience, or the future of the airline should be left to a politician-bureaucrat duo — Patel and Jadhav?

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The Maharashtra government which has now taken up a series of new measures to evaluate the performance of bureaucrats, now wants the assets of IAS and IPS officers to be declared. To make it enforceable, it has recently written to the Centre to make requisite changes in the All India Service Rule. As was reported by the DNA newspaper, chief minister Ashok Chavan said IAS and IPS officers should declare assets on the line of politicians.