The Hindu Business Line : The return of Clark Kent

“It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, its Indian aviation seeking a bailout!” For all the money the comic books spent on him, Superman never existed. Clark Kent may have. End July, in a press conference telecast nationwide, those rich men with their fleets of aircraft looked like us – Kent with a cupboard of broken dreams.

Honestly, I was happy. Earlier that month, well into the promised revolution in Indian skies through entry of private airlines, the company owned by one of these gentlemen offered me a ticket to fly from Leh to Delhi, for the very affordable sum of Rs 11,000.

Free market at play

I enjoyed seeing him get a taste of the market; the very same ‘free’ market where you had to book your ticket weeks in advance if you wanted a low rate.

Are you free when you have to decide months ahead what your life should be? Worse, if you chose to be free and made last-minute plans, the ticket rate challenged previously held notions of full fare. It defied geography. The joke at travel agents was that flying Delhi-Bangkok was cheaper than Leh-Delhi. I could imagine any of those airline bosses quipping: “It’s a free market, you are in the tourist season.” I could also imagine Mumbai during the monsoon and a particularly bad taxi driver retorting, “meter plus return fare.”

Govt in a fix

Nobody respects the consumer although everything is in his name. When the biggest airlines flew themselves into the operation theatre, the Government was caught in a tough spot.

It had a high fiscal deficit, dire need to maintain revenues and clamours for reduction in aviation sector taxes to cope with. How could it reduce taxes when it needed revenue desperately?

Arguably, the catalyst for confrontation had been the Government decision to intervene in troubled Air India. While continued Government presence in big business is debatable, as owner, its intervention in Air India was inevitable. The owner can’t look the other way.

Extrapolating that to mean uneven playing field was ignoring of business risk by powerful industrialists. If the Government caved in to the airlines’ wish-list, then what would stop other sectors from demanding similar relief?

No moral position

The Civil Aviation Ministry’s tough stance was likely driven by these realities and not a moral upper hand to discipline the industry.

When a cup of machine-made tea at the airport lounge or a pre-paid taxi at the exit is several times costlier than on the streets, what moral upper hand in aviation can the Government claim anyway?

The number of airlines has increased; with them, the supply of seats. Yet air travel is expensive and puzzling. For sure, the aviation turbine fuel price needs a re-look but so does business intent. In Leh, I eventually got a ticket that was 40 per cent cheaper for an inconvenient date from the same airline. The difference, the airline clerk told me, was that on the day of the lower cost ticket, they had two flights operating.

The only way I could then explain the disparity in ticket cost was to view the extra as premium, just as scooters and cars commanded premiums in the days of shortage preceding liberalisation.

Co-option

Such practices were history by the time the private airlines came in, in the name of dispelling shortage. Now history, repackaged for the market, had newfound ‘smartness.’ It was like a multiplex, envious of the black-marketer’s profit, eventually co-opting him with uniform and office desk.

When the Government threatened to invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to counter the now withdrawn airline strike, my only question was — what was its perception of transport till now?

The birds that flew into the operation theatre have since been shooed out. So, what’s next for Superman — most likely relief measures; although, on a lighter note, I wonder, would the Government take equity in the glamorous, high-flying heroes redrawing geography for higher ticket fares?

On the day the Centre was arm-twisted, a TV channel did carry a streamer quoting one beleaguered airline boss as saying he was open to Government stake.

Whatever. I don’t mind a proper return to Clark Kent if that keeps my personal freedom alive, travel costs low and transactions straightforward and simple. It is easier to live with a sky devoid of a saviour than a world full of smart people.

(The author is a freelance writer based in Mumbai.)

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