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Fasten your seat belts...

R. Desikan

Recently, newspapers reported about an order issued against Indian Airlines by a district consumer forum. The same day, I had a bad experience with the airline.

But, first, the forum's ruling: Indian Airlines was asked to pay Rs. 10,000 as compensation to a passenger for deficiency in service. The significant part of the order was that while the compensation would be paid by the airlines, the amount would be deducted from the official concerned.

Interestingly, even as the forum took five years to dispose of the petition, the official concerned was promoted as Director and, soon after, he retired from service. Now, how will Indian Airlines extract the money from the retired employee?

As a consumer activist, I welcome the order because it recognises that it is individuals who run institutions and giant corporations (in this case, irresponsible officials) and, therefore, deficiencies occur due to individual careless ness. We require more such orders which pin the responsibility on individuals who will then (hopefully) become more careful and ensure that the brand equity of their organisation does not suffer.

As for my personal experience, I encountered first-hand the callousness of individual officials. Returning to Chennai from New Delhi on an Indian Airlines flight, I had accidentally left my medicine pouch on the plane seat. The flight was de layed by two-and-a-half hours and I realised my mistake only the next day. I called the airline's office and requested the return of my bag. An official promised to check and get back to me. Of course, as I was dealing with a public sector organisation, I took no chances and called back myself. After several calls, I was finally told that the bag could not be found.

I rang up the airline's Regional Director and pointed out that if the bag was declared `not found', it could only mean that either the security personnel were negligent or the cleaning staff had removed the bag. The Regional Director agreed that i t was a serious security lapse and promised to investigate the matter thoroughly.

Lo and behold! within a few hours my bag was `found' and returned to me. Now, while I do appreciate the efforts made to recover my bag, I am also concerned about the negligence displayed by the staff.

Senior officials in the public sector must pay careful attention to ground-level staff who are at the cutting edge of the organisation. These staff should receive specialised training and be exposed to interactions with consumers and consumer a ctivists. Senior officials should also conduct surprise checks on the services manned by their juniors and initiate corrective steps whenever needed.

Let any senior official at Chennai's Air India office try and ring up the office. He will very likely find that either no one answers the phone or the lines are constantly engaged. By sheer luck, if he does get through, he will promptly be put on hold for an interminable time. Now, he should consider himself fortunate indeed if someone actually connects him to the department concerned. But, then, let him just try getting someone to attend to the phone...

The author is former chairman, Federation of Consumer Organisations, Tamil Nadu. He can be reached at rdesikan@vsnl.com