SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Pritish Nandy

Everything is collapsing because we refuse to see the big picture

Last Saturday, while waiting for almost an hour to get my checked-in priority baggage off an already vastly overdelayed Air-India flight coming in from the Middle East, I met a tour operator from Kerala. He came up and said hello. And, for want of anything better to do, like most Indian travellers, we started swapping horror stories about Air-India flights.

I was at my mean and sarcastic best because the flight I had arrived by was not only late by some critical hours but was utterly miserable as well. The galleys were filthy. The seats were a mess. There was no menu card distributed. No newspapers. The food was frightening. My dogs are better off. As for inflight service, the less said the better. What amused me most, however, was that there were no crew members on board who could read out the safety instructions in any language known to mankind. Someone mumbled something in what sounded like Zulu or Zambesi. It was certainly not English or Hindi, Arabic or Malayalam: the languages understood by most of the passengers aboard that particular flight.

Though I was travelling business class, in the very first row, where no one could have missed me, I got no headphones. No overnight kits. It took me about 45 minutes and repeated requests to even get a glass of water. A request made at the embarking airport, to inform my family that my flight was delayed and could they please send a car to the airport, was met with a stubborn no by the Air-India staff. It is not our responsibility, they said. Plus, we cannot make long distance calls. When I asked for the local manager, I was told he could not be disturbed at home after 6 in the evening. Conveniently, no one knew his phone number either. So there was no way I could reach him directly.

But forget my litany of woes. Whatever my unhappiness with the national carrier, I never travel any other airline. For me, it is only Air-India. Unless there is no Air-India flight to that destination where I am supposed to go, I always insist on flying my national carrier. Those who invite me to speak or address conferences or simply visit them, know this. That is why they always send me Air-India tickets. Because, in some strange masochistic way, like most Indians, I always associate flying Air-India with pride in being an Indian. For me, it is a nationalist act.

But this column is not about Air-India. I like Air-India. I believe in Air-India despite its ups and downs. Since Rajen Jetley’s time, I have seen its many vicissitudes and, I am sure, this too will pass. But, till that happens, we masochists will continue to suffer. I suspect the airline, too, will keep losing customers and market share till it understands (at some stage) that they are in the business of serving customers and trying to get them for repeat flights. One bad experience and you could have lost the customer for all time.

To understand this, the first important decision must be to disengage Air-India (and, for that matter, Indian Airlines) from the ministry of civil aviation. Just as the only way you can improve Doordarshan and AIR is to take them out of the clutches of the ministry of information and broadcasting. Luckily for Doordarshan, Jaipal Reddy understands that. That is why he has introduced the Prasar Bharti bill. Unluckily for Air-India, C M Ibrahim does not understand this. That is why he refuses to unshackle it from the Ministry. He wants to remain the sultan of the skies whereas Reddy, a cleverer, more perspicacious man wants to abdicate his power before it is taken away from him.

For, as everyone knows by now, the government is always an uncaring, arrogant, entirely stupid group of faceless people who hide behind each other to cover up their failures. If Air-India is to escape its terrible destiny, it must first escape political interference. It must escape the interventions of ministry officials, MPs, power brokers, pimps. It must escape the trauma of being a government-run organisation where everyone must grovel before the power elite of Delhi. Customers can go to hell.

Luckily, Air-India has an excellent CEO now, an insider who knows his job. Michael Mascarenhas. A man who was sidelined for years. Its chairman, Probir Sen has worked wonders as the CEO of Indian Airlines. Together, they make a fine team. What they now need is freedom. Freedom to do their own thing. If they get that, possibly the national carrier will live to see the new millenium. Otherwise, patriotism will not grow market share. And customer satisfaction died a long time back.

But let me revert to my chat with the tour operator from Kerala. Why does the Middle East attract so many visitors? So much tourism and business? The answer is, simply, price. We have, over the past decade, completely outpriced ourselves in our greed to grab as much profits as quickly as possible. Our hotels are far too expensive. Our taxi fares have gone through the roof. Our airlines are shabby and classless but that that does not stop us from frequently increasing our fares because we know that the government will pay whatever the airlines want — and, after all, goverment officers travel the most. So it is simply a question of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

This is exactly what happened to the stock market before it crashed.

Harshad Mehta pushed it harder and harder in the hope of increasing the value of stock to levels that would earn him huge, entirely undeserving profits. But the overheated stock market crashed under the burden of its own stupid greed. The same thing has happened to the real estate market today. Even as rates keep tumbling every day, the builders and brokers go around myth building. They push billions of rupees into sustaining the myth that prices will rise again to the absurd levels they were once at.

But you know -- and so do I -- that this will never happen. Prices of land and flats and offices will keep falling and falling till they hit realistic levels that are still very far away. At least another 50 per cent will need to be sheared off the prevailing prices.

Gold has tumbled for the same reasons. The diamonds market is in shambles for a long time now. Everything is collapsing because we refuse to see the big picture. Because we still believe that absurd prices and smart deals can sort out India’s problems. They cannot. We must understand value. Value for money. Value for property. Value for assets, investments, stocks, bullion. Anyone who believes that the flats on Malabar Hill can fetch higher prices than in Trump Towers needs to get his head examined. They will fall much further till real values are established and India becomes an intrinsic part of the global scenario.

No nation can live on hype, fakery, con. Imaginary values in a protected market. Our main problem is that, in India, these artificial values are sustained by a corrupt parallel economy where everyone is under pressure to quickly spend whatever s/he earns by questionable means. Everyone knows this. Look at the VDIS campaign. Even the government knows this. So do the tax officers. Even the extortion artistes. It is this cash income outside the tax books that puts pressure on prices.

Dirty weekends in fancy five star hotels begin to influence the genuine rate cards of hotels. Blowing up easily earned cash in restaurants set the price level for the actual menu card at a completely unrealistic high. Imported cars. Scotch whiskeys. Designer jewellery. Fancy antiques. Prices for all these are set by the big spenders, who have too much of cash in hand and too little time to spend it.

This cash goes into style purchases, flamboyant buys, secret farm houses, Swiss bank accounts. They go into buying property, jewellery, companies, mistresses. That is the reason why, in all these areas, artificial prices reign. Now, for the first time, the pressures of an open market are forcing us to understand the importance of real prices. If this continues, we will (like the rest of the world) find real value in real assets. It is only when that happens that India will attract real buyers, real travellers, real investors, real people. Only then will we have a real economy.

Pritish Nandy