There is news that Air India is to open an aviation academy in Shillong. What a bloody joke! This State-owned colossal loss-maker is a disgrace – its losses exceed 16,000 crore rupees; it has just received 5000 crores from The State; and it is also heavily in debt. What can such an airline teach?
One thing we Indians have learnt the hard way is that enterprise must be “private”; that there is no such thing called “public enterprise.” Air India was one of the world’s leading airlines when JRD Tata, a pioneer aviator himself, was at the helm. Today, with sarkaari baboons running the flop show, it is a shame. It is a drain on the nation’s wealth. Not only that, as I had recently blogged, it injects unfair competition into a sector where many private players have entered. These private players have given the customer a good deal. Air India, on the other hand, is a very bad deal – for the customer, and also for the nation. It should be sold. Period.
The news also says that the chief minister of Meghalaya is to “give” 12 acres of land to Air India for their academy. I think this land can be much better utilized in a thousand different ways.
The lesson: Don’t get a moron to set up an academy and teach. The people will only learn rubbish.
This lesson is driven home by a brief column in Mint today that talks about land titles. The point the authors make is that India’s land title system is in total disarray. They argue in favour of a strong property rights regime, including title insurance. Without such a system, India can never become a great piece of real estate.
Of course, Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi is spending 150,000 crores on a system of ID cards. He is not particularly bothered about property rights or land titles.
But he too wants to teach.
I hope you have learnt an important lesson today.
Not only do they want to teach, they want to make it "compulsory". And they call it a RIGHT. The incompetent recruiting the ignorant.
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