It’s always Air India, and its assets, both non-living and living, to the rescue when the chips are down, putting their lives in danger to serve the nation.
BSNL, India Post, Indian Railways, LIC, and many other institutions that are serving strategic national interests cannot be seen from a purely P&L perspective. We pay taxes for a reason.
Once we start seeing everything from a bottom-line lens, it will become difficult to decide where to draw the line. The USA went all the way to privatising defence (no, not just production, but also actual military duties) to ‘contractors’ (aka mercenaries) and we know how that ended up for them (not for the privateers, but for the tax-paying citizens of the United States of America, and for their hard-fought-for and hard-built reputation as a superpower across the world).
By the way, did you know that most Empires in recent history (say, the past 3000-odd years), have collapsed when they started privatising their strategic assets (their fighting forces, their tax collectors, their food growers, their navies, their economy, and so on) keeping with them only the higher-end value adds (for example, growing cotton was outsourced, but the spinning of yarn and fabric was in-house, or immigrants were asked to enlist without the benefit of citizenship, but the general officers were always citizens, or the state-owned the land only in name, but allowed the tax to be collected by private entities)? From the Greeks to the Romans, from the Italian city-states to the English, from the mighty Mughals to the fearsome Marathas, whenever large empires and imperial rule has collapsed, one of the major factors has been the line between what is considered strategic and what is considered subsidiary or secondary to the core duties of the government of a nation, was pushed to a point where the entire ‘civilisation’ became one large monopoly game.
The founding fathers of literally every modern nation recognised this, and built the base (or what they thought was foundational at their time) first: steel mills, dams, schools and higher educational institutes, research organisations, roads, telegraphs, ships, banks, and so on. We may course-correct from time to time and update our knowledge on current wisdom, but we cannot start pushing the envelope on stuff that is so clearly red-lined.
As a capitalist, I agree that the government has no need to be in business. But some sectors are not just ‘businesses’. And while a monopoly in these may not be called for, the people must have enterprises owned by them with a mandate that goes counter to a commercial for-profit organisation, for the sake of the interest and the security of the nation. That means that while an out-and-out commercial enterprise may well strive to offer the least possible (legally, morally, and PR-wise) to and take the most possible (price discovery?) from the marketplace, there ought to be in the same marketplace other tax-funded organisations that have an opposite mandate to take the minimum and deliver the maximum, even if that means they may be completely reliant on the tax money for their survival. Because then, and only then, can the decision to send an Air India plane with civilian pilots to a conflict zone with a view to evacuating our citizens be justified. Not on grounds of profit. But of national interest.
Disclaimer: I grew up an Air Force and later, an Air India kid. Everything my family has is because of these two services/entities. My debt to them sometimes colours my perspective. But sometimes, even with the weight of all that baggage, I can be right. This, I believe, is one of those times.
