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Collective
Wisdom The issue is not appointing
governors, the issue is appointing them without acrimony
It would be silly to reduce the BJP-led Government's
decision to remove the governors of West Bengal and Arunachal Pradesh to yet another
debate on the powers of a caretaker regime. When I.K. Gujral's lame-duck ministry
appointed governors in 1998, the Election Commission upheld its right to do so. Raj
Bhavan's role is largely ornamental. Therefore changing governors cannot be as sacrosanct
as, say, the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty may be. While the
constitutionality of the recent action cannot be faulted, the timing certainly can. Since
the term of A.R. Kidwai in Calcutta expired in August 1998 and that of Mata Prasad in
Itanagar did so two months later, the Home Ministry could well be hauled up for working
behind schedule. Such a performance deserves a frown. To term it "uncivilised and
barbaric" -- as Jyoti Basu, West Bengal's excitable chief minister, has done -- would
be to challenge the limits of the English language.
With the term of Karnataka's governor having long ended and
with Orissa's governor being on sick leave for a year and a half now, rhetoric is not
going to solve anything. The real issue is the repeated misuse of the governor's office --
everything else is a red herring. The Sarkaria Commission stipulated that the appointment
of a governor should be preceded by a consultation between the Centre and the chief
minister concerned and that active politicians should not be considered for the job. If
this principle were institutionalised many controversies, including the past week's, would
simply not arise. In the past proposals have been made for a college comprising the
vice-president, the prime minister, the home minister, the chief minister and, perhaps,
the chief justice of India, which will appoint the governor for an inviolate five year
term. It is interesting that the very parties that welcome such ideas while in opposition,
forget them when in government. Has anything changed?
Still Losing Altitude
Indian Airlines needs more than just fresh capital.
It needs a new owner.
Churlish as it may sound, the Government's decision
to permit Indian Airlines (IA) to inject Rs 325 crore by way of equity and eventually
reduce its own holding in the airline to 49 per cent may be a case of too little, too
late. Till about a decade ago, IA flew in a happy monopoly market. Competition and the
disastrous merger with Vayudoot, in effect, crippled it. Today, it is saddled with an
ageing fleet and teeming offices. Productivity rates are unchanged since 1984. IA has over
400 employees to an aircraft; British Airways has 210. Some years ago, the Kelkar
Committee recommended fresh capital flows of Rs 922 crore into IA. The logic of the Kelkar
report pointed to the eventual privatisation of the airline. The Government's announcement
of May 10 is a belated first step in this direction. The point is: is it enough?
The issue nobody wants to confront is that IA -- like its
cousin, Air India (AI) -- is in the ICU. Of course, AI's state is even more perilous, with
losses for 1998-99 amounting to Rs 340 crore. The civil aviation ministry, in the true
traditions of Nero's Rome rajya, has simply watched while its crown jewels have lost more
and more of their lustre. Brimming with ideas -- private airports, new airlines, upgraded
traffic control mechanisms, the works -- its record of implementation has been appalling.
Not surprisingly then, doubts persist about the planned rejuvenation of IA. That apart,
the state of the capital markets and IA's balance sheet don't exactly make for a high
premium share offering. Perhaps a better option would be to transfer managerial control of
IA to a partner of established bona fides -- of course, after inviting transparent
tenders. The ministry scuttled the Tata-Singapore Airlines project by raising the bogey of
foreign investment. Ironically, it may be an overseas ally that will give IA a second
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