Scepticism is a dilemma of the naïve. The scriptures tell us that there is heaven in the next life, and we remain dicey about its prospects. More immediate evidence tells me that there is heaven on earth. It is otherwise known as owning an airline in India. This is the one business where you cannot fail, since if you know how to fail properly, the rewards will continue to accumulate.
When you launch an airline, to the usual fanfare of trumpets, a queue of suits from high finance waits in the ante room of the Big Boss, eager to flood his coffers with cash in the name of economic growth. When, in a thousand days or two, you have piloted your airline into visible bankruptcy, an even larger number of banks flock around to parcel out even more money, this time in the name of patriotism. Their only requirement is that Big Boss makes silent deals with politicians and garrulous ones with journalists. This public relations smokescreen does not need logic, nor does it have to make sense: those obligations are for a less exalted breed of businessman. But it has to be loud.
The louder the demand for a bailout on jugglery terms, the more ecstatic the response from bankers eager to hand out the public’s hard-earned money for an endless bonfire in the skies. No one questions this clamour as long as it is conducted in correct English. It is a hallmark of economic reform nationalism to chase bad money with fresh capital. The true motto of such a glamorous business is: Heads, I win; tails, you lose.
Who is “you”? Well, you and me. All of us mugs who put money in a bank in the belief that it is in safe custody, and in any case there is nowhere else to put it. Big Bosses and Bankers are not so stupid as to employ personal wealth in their five-star game. Cats do not get fat by slurping from their children’s inheritance. They dine sumptuously on borrowed food. Bankers justify their “lending” on the ephemeral strength of an accountant’s imagination. The accountant, of course, is smart enough to collect his three percent fee long before the board acknowledges publicly what it knew all along, that it was all a fantasy to indulge a few lifestyles. Then the board assumes a doleful countenance in order to ask for more. Such is the merry-go-round of post-modern capitalism.
Running an airline, as far as one can make out from airports, is pretty cool as well. The rules are different; and you can make up new ones when the old turn decrepit. Try this experiment. Order a car, or a safety pin, pay for it, and turn up at the shop. You will get what you paid for. Buy a fully paid airline ticket, and all you have purchased is a promise within a zone of uncertainty. It is understandable if weather, for instance, is the reason for delay or cancellation. But airlines no longer feel compelled to offer the truth as an explanation. They hide behind a catch-all excuse: “technical reasons”. One of these days I shall be very delighted to be introduced to non-technical reasons. Which glamour puss would be so considerate as to announce that a flight has actually been cancelled because Big Boss forgot to pay for the fuel for passengers although he does seem to have enough for his own private Boeing? Those who bluff and hide away live to fly another day.
The real trick is to fail on a spectacular scale; that is, in front of millions of spectators. This, naturally, must be accompanied by dramatic outbreaks of attitude. Everyone gets intimidated into submission.
I know of one airline owner, however, who is modest, and frameworks his business philosophy in the same culture. He sticks to the possible, and then personally ensures that his company achieves it, before venturing into the probable. He keeps to himself, and has coffee incognito in a coffee shop when he wants to chat with a friend. There are no parties for Page 3 photographers or interviews to jaded sections of a newspaper. He is supremely unconcerned about whether anyone recognises him or not, and I won’t annoy him by publishing his name. His company lives within the prudent confines of black ink, despite the fact that he has to pay the same price for fuel as anyone else. He has an ego, since it is part of human chemistry, but he doesn’t hang it out like boutique laundry in an upwardly mobile home. He has created one of the great brands of modern aviation. He is not a star on Twitter. But he is a star in office. He belongs to a genre where an industrialist understood that his first commitment was to industry, not caprice.
Such a role model is not, alas, heaven on earth. It is earth on earth.
The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.
