Saturday, 27 December 2025
HIMALAYAN BLUNDER- MURDER OF THE MOUNTAINS.
Sunday, 21 December 2025
THE INVITATION DILEMMA
Being a dyed in the wool (now a 'dead in the water' ) bureaucrat, I have never been the life and soul of any party. But strangely enough, hostesses kept inviting me frequently to dinners, I suspect because of my village idiot qualities, because I could keep a conversation flowing in the silences when everyone else had their snouts buried in the main course. But since 2015 or so the invitations have dried up, like the mythical Saraswati river: divergent political perceptions make the breaking of bread with me an uncomfortable experience. Most of my erstwhile friends, colleagues (those not yet brain dead, that is) and those sharing the Shukla genes with me, are of the view that Mr. Modi's arrival has been like the Second Coming whereas I see it as Paradise Lost or the arrival of the False Messiah. But this suits me fine: in these twilight (not yet sunset, folks) years one cannot wish for more of an evening than a single malt at hand, a contented pooch at one's feet, smoke rings framing one's face like a Henri Matisse painting, and the sounds of Beethoven's Emperor concerto wafting through the house, a voice-over, as it were, to the sounds of the city.
Which brings me smoothly to the media frenzy about the invitations for the dinner/banquet for Mr. Putin recently. It was made out that Rahul Gandhi's omission from the guest list was a well deserved snub for his hostility to Modi and the purchase of Russian oil by India. To which my response is: HUH? Being invited for dinner with a war criminal, a fugitive from an ICC arrest warrant, a killer of half a million Ukranians and a million of his own soldiers, a kidnapper of 10000 children- that is not exactly the greatest honour in the world, is it? ( I am not even going into the question of whether it was appropriate for India to have hosted, and laid out the red carpet, for such a person). Mr. Modi and his cohorts may be comfortable in the company of the Putins and Netanyahus of this world, but most of the civilized world is not. And I suspect the government knew this, and that RG would in all probability turn down a dinner invitation in any case and so made a virtue out of necessity.
Something Mr. Shashi Tharoor should have done, in my view. He is no longer a part of India's government or even its official diplomatic framework, and was thus not bound by MEA's protocol or the invitation. I am not saying here that he should have refused the invitation as part of a Congress "boycott" of Modi or Putin, but as a moral statement. If he could disassociate himself from a Savarkar award, then why not a Putin dinner? Aren't both based on the same principle of right and wrong? Surely, what is sauce for the RSS goose should also be sauce for the Russian gander. But maybe Shashi was just being cautious: Putin may have taken umbrage and treated him as an enemy. And his enemies have an odd habit of ending up in hospital beds or beneath the Siberian permafrost. Just this week he has threatened personal harm to the Belgian Prime Minister and President of its Central Bank if they released Russia's frozen assets to the European Union for further disbursal to Ukraine! Certainly not a dinner to die for, as Gen Z would say, or more likely, tweet. Safer to sup with the devil, I daresay.
Not that these dinners are very exciting or stimulating occasions. I have attended many during my days in the MEA, and have even organised a few in that Mecca of gastronomic diplomacy, Hyderabad House in New Delhi; I can vouch for the fact that these repasts are like a Death Watch, where everyone fervently wishes for the proceedings to end quickly. Nobody knows anyone, the seating arrangement always ensures that the person you dislike most in the world is seated next to you, you need to be fluent in at least seven languages in order to converse with anyone, all the pretty ladies are arranged next to the Chief Guest or Host like a row of savouries, out of reach of even an Indian Wrestling Federation office-bearer. Everyone is more tight-lipped than the oyster in your soup lest they let slip a state secret, the food tastes like a dog's breakfast, no liquor is served in India: they served apple juice or nimbu pani during my time but its probably cow urine now. Everything is so bloody formal and starchy that even the chicken legs on the plate stand at attention. No wonder Rahul Gandhi skipped the Putin feeding orgy and went to a pizza joint instead.
But I must concede that rejecting such invitations is not without its risks. In the early 80's, as a relatively junior officer in Shimla, I received an invite for a dinner at Raj Bhavan. I had attended these ghastly functions earlier, in which you had to sing the national anthem before the soup and again after the dessert, and had no intention of parading my patriotism again. So I fixed up a squash game with my buddy Sandeep Madan that evening and sent a regret to the Governor's Secretary. Sandeep, who thinks that keeping an appointment with a senior is a sign of servility, never turned up, so I missed both the dinner and the game. Next morning I was summoned by the Chief Secretary, Mr. Tochhawng.
Now, no one with an IQ of 25 and above (the UPSC benchmark for the IAS) argued with Mr. Tochhawng, primarily because he was built like a Patton tank, was about 6' 6'' tall and had a genuine 56" chest, unlike some people I don't know. He was a mild man most of the time, but when he was wont to shout he sounded like thunder reverberating among the mountain peaks. He started reverberating the moment I entered his room. "What's this I hear about your refusing a Raj Bhavan invitation, Shukla?" he roared like a primed IED. "I had a squash game lined up, sir," I replied. The IED exploded. "You should shove that squash racquet up where the sun doesn't shine, young man! No one- NO ONE- rejects an invitation from the Governor, you cretin, it's not an invitation-it's an ORDER! Got it?"
You bet I got it. Maybe Shashi Tharoor was right, after all.
Thursday, 11 December 2025
THE INDIGO BUSINESS MODEL - IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY, HONEY! [ AND A DASH OF BLACKMAIL]
Now that the "Fasten seat belts" signs have been switched off and Indigo's schedule is beginning to return to normal, this is a good time to try and figure out the real cause of this fiasco. Not since the Champaran satyagraha of Mahatma Gandhi has indigo stirred up such a hornet's nest! Was the airline and its Board of Directors caught napping by the November deadline of DGCA? Did they think the govt. would not enforce the FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limits)? Did they miscalculate the number of pilots needed under the new rules (as the CEO of Indigo has conveniently "admitted")? The received wisdom of all the experts currently is that the answer to all three questions is a resounding YES. Having become a congenital skeptic since 2014, however, I am not all that sure. What I can clearly see, as a layman, is that Indigo has dished out a smorgasbord of blackmail and profiteering, its BOD confident in the belief that the Rs. 37 crore electoral bond donation to the BJP post Covid would ensure that the regulator (DGCA) would look the other way, as all regulators do. The whole thing appears to be deliberate, not negligence simpliciter, born out of a feeling of arrogance based on market share and the knowledge that the regulator was firmly in its pocket.
Indigo's BOD reads like a Hall of Fame, comprising of people with vast experience of managing large organisations and of dealing with govt. regulations; I cannot therefore accept that they were unaware of the implications of the new FDTL, both in terms of finances and HR, or of what would happen to their operational schedules after Nov. 1, 2025 if they did not take immediate action to recruit more pilots. This assumption is borne out by the fact that Indigo ADDED 200 daily flights to its operations in 2025, taking the figure of daily flights to almost 2500. But- and this is the giveaway- it added only 418 pilots (Business Today, 8th Dec. 2025).
The airline's reluctance to hire adequate number of pilots gives us a clue as to why it did not prepare for the implementation of the new FDTL. Under these changed rules it needed to recruit at least 1000 more pilots; its failure to do so is what has led to the chaos in the first week of December. Did its business model (BM) anticipate the chaos but it decided to do nothing anyway, in order to make some more bucks? Quite a few bucks, actually. I see three distinct revenue earning components in this BM:
[1] The median monthly wage of a commercial pilot in India is about Rs. 5 lakhs, annual Rs. 60 lakhs. Adding various flying allowances, this figure would go up to about Rs. 80 lakhs per annum. For the 1000 additional pilots needed, therefore, Indigo would have had to incur an additional expenditure of Rs. 800 crore per annum. By not recruiting them the airline has saved Rs. 1460 crore over the 18 month period given for implementing the FDTL rules (giving the phrase "low cost airline" an entirely new meaning!). Enough to cock a snook at the government.
[2] Indigo could not have been unaware that it would have to cancel a large number of flights when the new FDTL came into effect (because it had not recruited the additional pilots required)- the number of flights cancelled from December 4 in fact comes to about 5000 as I write this. It should not have been hard to do the cancellations in advance in an ordered manner because the airline has advanced software that can calculate/match/project the rostering of crew and flights. But it went ahead and accepted bookings for all flights as if it was business as usual. The resultant chaos led to cancellations for about 500,000 passengers. Time for some calculations to compute how much extra bucks Indigo must have made out of this.
The airline offers full refunds only for flights it itself cancels; if a passenger cancels then almost half the fare amount is forfeited as cancellation charges. This is where the catch (and the profiteering) lies: the airline SOP is not to announce cancellations in advance (even when it knows that the flight has to be cancelled eventually) but to keep delaying the flight incrementally, sometimes for 8 to 10 hours, till it finally announces cancellation. When this becomes a regular feature, chaos ensues, passengers panic and start cancelling themselves. This is where the big bucks come rolling in.
Assuming that half of the 500,000 cancelled passengers aborted their flights themselves, and assuming that the average ticket price was Rs. 10000 (both reasonable assumptions), then the airline stood to make Rs. 125 crores from this planned extortion. Indigo also profits from the other 50% (which it will refund at leisure) because it will sit on this Rs.125 crores for at least a month, using it as free working capital! Nothing will happen to its share prices, notwithstanding the public outrage, because the fliers don't have a choice. Indigo shares dipped by single digits initially for a day, but are now back on track. The stock market doesn't have a conscience or sense of right or wrong; it is amoral and reacts only to ground realities. And the reality is that the consumer or public in India now doesn't count, he is at the mercy of monopolies and duopolies, whether of the public or private sector- telecom, ports, airports, highways, cement, media, railways. He also doesn't have any redress because the Regulators serve the interests of the industries and businesses they are meant to regulate, and not that of the consumer. And the government doesn't give a damn since it continues to win elections by landslides; it doesn't have to listen to the voter because it locks up the needed votes long before any voter even sets foot in a polling booth.
The coverup has begun, as expected, with an inquiry ordered, show cause notices issued and a 10% reduction in Indigo's flights; this is not even a band-aid. What needs to be done-immediately- is the following:
* Sack the Civil Aviation Minister, the Secretary (Aviation) and the DGCA. They need to go, not only for having allowed this fiasco to play out, but also because of (a) allowing Indigo to acquire a near-monopoly status, (b) failing to monitor the airline's implementation status of the FDTL rules for over 18 months, (c) allotting it another 200 routes during this year without verifying its capacity to operate them as per the new rules, (d) succumbing to blackmail and deferring implementation of FDTL only for Indigo, further compromising passenger safety, (e) allowing 53% of DGCA's staff complement to remain vacant, severely affecting its functioning.
* Sack the entire Board of Directors of Indigo for having failed to implement govt regulations, compromising safety and causing avoidable trauma, misery and financial loss to millions of passengers. They have proved that they are either over-rated showmen or under-rated extortionists. As for the blundering foreign CEO, maybe the Prime Minister should direct his "Macaulay mind-set" barbs at the need to hire white skinned people for top jobs, ignoring swadeshi talent?
* Make public relevant extracts of the airlines' BOD minutes of the meetings over the last 18 months where the FDTL was discussed, so that the public can be made aware of the actual reasons for not implementing the new rules.
* Reduce Indigo's routes by at least 25% as it has just established that it has not developed the capacity to operate them all safely and is only acting as the dog in the manger. Allot these routes to other, compliant airlines.
* Order Indigo to make full refund of the entire ticket price (including taxes) of all tickets cancelled from 2.12.2025 onwards, regardless of whether it was cancelled by the flyer or by the airline itself. It should not be allowed to profit from its own incompetence or the consumers' pain.
* Ensure financial compensation of at least Rs. 10000 for each passenger who was not informed of his flight cancellation in advance and had to put up with hours of waiting at the airports. This could be treated as part of the fine to be imposed on the company.
* A severe fine commensurate with the mayhem it has caused should be imposed on the airline. One suggestion could be: a fine of Rs. 1 crore for every flight cancelled without at least a 12 hour advance notice to the passengers who had booked tickets.
* It is common sense that Indigo cannot fully comply with the new FDTL rules even by February 2026. Therefore the Civil Aviation Ministry should make a public commitment that the new FDTL will not be deferred beyond February 2026 under any circumstances, and that Indigo will be allowed to operate only as many routes as it has crews for according to the new rules. This roster should be submitted by it to the DGCA at least a month in advance of the new deadline, and it should not be allowed to make any bookings for the flights it will not be allowed to operate.
The lives of 180 million passengers cannot any longer be held hostage to a business model based on the arrogance of market share, blackmail and profiteering.
Sunday, 7 December 2025
THE VANDE BHARAT PARADOX
THE VANDE BHARAT PARADOX
The Vande Bharat stable of trains is the pride of the Indian railways, and deservedly so. Their coaches are state of the art, comprising the best in the world in technology and comfort, rivalling the airlines at a fraction of the cost. Each set of 16 coaches costs about Rs. 130 crores, ten times the cost of an average train; the railways run 75 pairs of these trains currently, but plan to raise it to 4500 by 2047 . But the Vande Bharat has an Achilles heel-designed to run at 200 kms/hour, its average speed is only 76/hour, no better than the Rajdhani or the Shatabdi of much more ancient vintage, negating its very purpose and expenditure. Outdated track and signals technology have simply not kept pace with the more modern rolling stock, poor maintenance and anti-collision systems, overloaded train schedules bedevil the railway system. Proof of this lies in the statistics: in the eleven years ending 2023 there were 678 train crashes, resulting in 1061 deaths (ref National Crime Records Bureau). If one were to quantify all accidents such as people falling off trains or walking on the tracks or mishaps at railway crossings etc. the figure for just 2023 is a mind boggling 24678 accidents and 21835 deaths. This is the Vande Bharat Paradox- the attempt to impose a modern superstructure on a crumbling infrastructure without proper preparation or 360* planning, driven by misplaced priorities and a publicity-seeking paranoia. And this is not peculiar to the railways alone but pervades all our development parameters and sectors.
Take our highways. At 146,204 kms India has one of the largest networks of National Highways in the world, and this is expanding at 45 kms per day, having increased by 60% since 2015. Mr. Gadkari boasts that by 2030 we will rival the USA. In length maybe, but not in quality, for the Vande Bharat paradox is at play here too. The groundwork for such a rapid expansion has not been done: the roads are of poor quality, the cars and drivers not suited for high-speed expressways, and enforcement is wanting. The proof, again, lies in the statistics. There were 172000 deaths in accidents in 2024-25, with an astonishing AGR of 9.8%. We record 2247 deaths per million vehicles, as against 814 for China and 141 for the USA: our highways are corridors of death, not just transportation. The reason? Development of associated but essential hard and soft infrastructure has not kept pace with the physical construction of roads- we are grossly deficient in road designs and engineering, timely maintenance, enforcement of road discipline, international level road and traffic signages, efficient highway patrol systems, availability of medical and trauma centers to provide the golden hour treatment for accident victims, the licensing regimes are riddled with corruption. As in the case of the railways, we have put the cart before the horse here too.
Next, consider our education eco-system. Here again the statistics are impressive- a superstructure of 18000 colleges and 800 universities, churning out 15 million graduates every year, including 1.50 million engineers and 180000 doctors. Enough, one would think, to power us strongly to developed nation status. But look closely and one finds the Vande Bharat paradox playing out here too. For barely 40% of these youngsters are employable, such is the quality of our primary and higher education, thanks to poor regulation, corruption in the selection of teachers, persistent paper leaks, governments abdicating their responsibility and out-sourcing education to profiteering corporates. The proof is not far away here either: the global QS World University Rankings (2026) saw all but one of India's Top Ten educational institutes slide sharply in their ranks; IIT Bombay from 48 to 71, IIT Delhi from 44 to 59.
And worse is to come, for the BJP govt. at the center has an antediluvion concept of education, and is sparing no effort at hollowing out the very foundations of our education system. It is turning our Universities from being centers of inquiry to centers of strait-jacketed conformism, repression and ideological brain-washing. Vice Chancellors and Directors (of IIMs and IITs) are chosen on the basis of loyalty and ideological compatibility, not scholarship or administrative experience, and their primary task is to crush the spirit of inquiry; in JNU alone, more than 500 cases have been filed in the Delhi High Court by students and faculty against such high-handedness.
Even worse is the manner in which the UGC and NCERT are mutilating syllabi for colleges and schools and embedding in them an unscientific and backward-looking political ideology. So the Mughals are largely deleted from history books, secularism and federalism as subjects from text books, Darwin's Theory of Evolution and the Periodic Tables are expunged from Class 10 textbooks. This is an institutionalizing of scientific illiteracy. A generation of "qualified quacks" is being created by integrating modern, science based medicine with traditional systems and allowing homeopaths to practice modern pharmacology. In short, the very scientific temper which ensures real development is being eroded from under our educational institutions. The gleaming buildings are being hollowed out from within and the damage will be felt years down the line.
The Vande Bharat paradox pervades other areas of "development too, where all is not what it seems and contradictions are all too apparent: the fourth largest economy in the world but with 300 million in poverty and free rations for 800 million , glitzy metros that have the highest pollution levels in the world, the Umar Khalid paradox where a young scholar is neither tried nor convicted but continues to languish in jail for 5 years, the GDP paradox where, though the Govt. says we are growing at 7% or 8%, the IMF cautions that the figures are doctored, the Crime and Reward paradox where the crime is proved but the criminal is allowed to retain the proceeds of the crime. The list is endless We are living in an imaginary world where paradoxes reign supreme. To put it in the words of my late English teacher, Prof. P.Lal: We are what we think, having become what we thought. The institutionalization of delusion.