What's more shocking than intriguing in the state of government intervention for proposing to consortium of banks to increase the credit limit (read bail out) for Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines is that the same government which fails to protect the national interest of many PSUs now treads dangerously on rather an unprecedented move to create a bad precedent in the history of economic liberalization of India. Is this a proactive move or a glimpse of dirty nexus between government and corporate that has produced crony capitalism in India? Why the minister of Civil Aviation including the prime minister himself are on a hot foot to show their magnanimity for a corporate entity that has shamelessly failed to understand the business of aviation and has eventually turned into a loss making venture? The irony here is that when the national carrier Air India is bleeding so badly and the same government is apparently clueless about the turnaround strategy, what's the rationality behind this bail out plan for a private company?
Perhaps, there might be some hidden agenda behind this irrational move of government, but the larger question here is what prompts the ministers to be so idiosyncratically shameless to sing the chorus of crony capitalism in a time when the corporate entities are forgetting their fundamental responsibilities of managing a business with due diligence? In a free market, the corporates have huge freedom, irrespective of challenging government policies whatsoever untoward or nonsupporting, to run a business with dexterity and reason; however, the Kingfisher Airlines has severely failed to showcase the fundamentals of operational excellence. And the sad part is that the prime minister has expressed the concerns over faulty government policies that have affected the civil aviation industry at large. So, what the technocrat prime minister was doing till now? Was he in a slumber mode? Or had he lost his wisdom to advise the corresponding departmental ministers at least once in last seven years to take a serious cognizance of the issue?
Although this is not a so called pure bail out plan for Kingfisher Airlines, even the government's unreasonable concern for a private venture is an unwelcome move. Any corporate has its own board to advise the executives to manage the organization within the PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) ecosystem, and if the board has failed to recognize the glaring issues and lost its wit to understand the bigger picture, it's better that corporate entity should die early rather screaming for public help. In either case, the story of that corporate would be a disastrous business case which no one would like to give a sneak preview, forget about mulling over.
