The fault lies not in our stars…

Or in sacrificial goats for that matter, but in the shirker black sheep in the PIA

If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, it is that of the gory sacrifice of a ritual black goat on resumption of the first ATR42 flight after the tragic Havelian crash. It is a big hit on social media and no doubt with the global networks, furnishing, as it does, another example of our social, cultural backwardness and superstitious bent. The ill-advised employees who amusedly carried out the slaughter have done a great disservice both to their airline’s image, such as it is, and to the intrepid travelers who still patronise it despite all hazards. PIA’s advertising agency, if any, will have to work overtime to allay the fears of future passengers regarding their safety if it is to be based solely on animal sacrifice, burnt offerings, invocations and supplications.

The national airline’s litany of disasters and near disasters has reached alarming proportions and hardly a day passes without some harrowing report of an in flight malfunction or a burst wheel while landing or a pilot’s reported inclination for certain refreshments causing his plane to careen off the runway. No doubt the airline is strapped for cash, running in billions of Rupees of loss, saddled with political appointees employed for their connections and birth and not for their worth, and the government is now infatuated with the new airline being set up, but all this cannot excuse professional negligence and toying with the lives of passengers by ignoring or short cutting normal maintenance and safety checks which responsible people should take.

The spirits and deities first made their appearance during the inauguration of the Nandipur power plant. The Punjab chief minister claimed that the swift completion of the project was not the work of man alone but that the Djinns (‘Jinnaat’) also pitched in with a helping hand. As the project closed within a few days, it is clear that a wrong spell had been cast in this case. But here too the real cause was technological, not supernatural.