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Letters to the Editor: March 29, 2019

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FEATURE LETTER DIARY 679x400 e1553672678487Industry loses yet another ‘Richard Branson’ of Indian aviation

The Indian sky has witnessed a history with forceful ‘de-planning’ of the Chairman from the board of Jet Airways. The exit was inevitable owing to dilution of the shares from debt to equity thereby being ‘de-restored’ finally from the board. The exit also comes at a time when the aviation industry is witnessing huge challenges owing to management- ownership control, financial disputes leading to mounting losses, rising fuel costs, aircraft technical and maintenance issues forcing cancellations, emergence of Low Cost Carriers model against Full Service Carriers etc. to name a few.

After collapse of Air Deccan and Kingfisher Airlines with exalted success stories, it is now the turn of Jet Airways which has failed to capitalise on being run as a ‘one-man’ leadership airline. It is also known that such a move leading to complete exit from the airline industry was an outcome of ‘one-man’ leaders being at the sole mercy of lenders/bankers- owing to archaic financial regulations and unfriendly investor/industry polices to a certain extent.

One only hopes that the new government formed in June post General Elections 2019 will initiate key airline-investor friendly polices on urgent basis to revive the Indian skies, repose faith in the passengers and restore declining airline traffic and thus strive to keep airline industry soaring high in the Indian skies. With the recent exit of Goyal, the industry has lost yet another ‘Richard Branson’ of Indian aviation.

 

Varun Dambal

 

Change poll-symbol of BSP rather than covering elephants

BSP supremo during her regime in UP had installed large number of statues of elephants throughout the state especially in newly developed public-places. Heavy money is spent during poll-season in covering these statues of elephants because elephant is party-symbol of BSP. Rather than such heavy spending from public-exchequer in covering statues of elephants after every two or three years, Election Commission of India ECI should freeze elephant as poll-symbol, and all political parties including BSP should be given some other election-symbol.

ECI has also taken cognizance, and rightly too, of photos of Prime Minister printed on rail-tickets and boarding-passes of Air India. Hoardings at almost every petrol-pump bearing photos of Prime Minister had to be removed after implementation of Model code of conduct for elections. It may be recalled that billboards at all national highways carrying photos of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had to be covered at huge cost after announcement of elections. Unnecessary spending of public-money must be saved by imposing ban of photos of political rulers in government-advertisements.

 

Madhu Agrawal

 

Ban car-loans to check ever-increasing car-population

It refers to data that car-population and density (number of cars per kilometer length in a city) is on continuous rise throughout the country with disciplined Mumbai having maximum car-density of 518 as compared to just 108 in Delhi. Interestingly cities like Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru with car-density of 359, 319, 297 and 149 are far ahead than Delhi in terms of car-density. Delhi has maximum number of private cars at 32.46 lakhs leaving Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata far behind at 15.73, 10.2, 8.47, 7.91 and 5.91 lakhs respectively.

Continuous development and construction of new roads and flyovers is not enough to meet ever-growing car-population in the country especially in capital city of Delhi which has 28000 kilometers road-length as compared to just 2000 kilometers in Mumbai. Study should be made about quite low number of private cars in metro-city of Kolkata which has just 5.91 lakhs private cars as compared to Delhi having 32.46 lakh private cars even though Delhi has vast and perhaps biggest network of metro-rail.

To effectively check growth of private cars is to impose a total ban on car-financing to be started with Delhi and initially on cars with ex-showroom price of say Rs 10 lakhs. Such a step will discourage production of costly cars including SUVs (Socially Useless Vehicles) occupying much-more space on roads and parking-lots. Car-manufacturers will then compete in providing maximum comfort in low-priced cars with ex-showroom-price less than Rs 10 lakhs. Car-financing must not be allowed on diesel-driven cars irrespective of price-tag because diesel is deliberately kept lower priced because of its use in commercial vehicles but is being misused in costly cars with diesel engines. Rather sale of diesel-cars should be totally banned.

 

Subhash Chandra Agrawal

 

 Sanatan and allegations

There is now nothing new in allegations made against Sanatan Sanstha. This time, however, the allegations are connected to Congress’ Lok Sabha candidate Navinchandra Bandiwadekar from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency and Sanatan Sanstha. It has been observed that in all allegations made so far, Sanatan Sanstha has been a constant factor of target because no accusation against this ‘Sanstha’ has been proved so far which seems to be quite infuriating for its opponents. It has been realized that the ‘Sanstha’ cannot be implicated in earlier accusations; therefore, something new is thrust upon, only to ensure Sanstha’s defamation and special attention is paid to see that the feeling of hatred would remain generated amongst people towards this ‘Sanstha’. One simple example is when a person is continuously accused of something, earlier background of such person is investigated and it becomes easy to draw some conclusions against that person. In case of Sanatan Sanstha, it is observed that attempts are made to implicate its name anyhow so that the name would linger in people’s mind. Why shouldn’t it be said that care is taken to see that people would always have suspicion over the ‘Sanstha’. People are saying that Sanatan Sanstha has been purposely pulled into the battle of forthcoming Parliamentary elections.   

 

Manasi Joshi

 

Congress, issuing tickets to controversial candidates 

Questions are being raised about both Congress and NCP issuing tickets to controversial names and that is causing ripples in the minds of party cadres and the opposition is looking for a big opening with tainted personalities in the election field. Social and secular commitment is important in politics and there is no reason to show favoritism. Eye-brows have also been raised by NCP issuing ticket to history sheeter and it is giving scope for the ruling party to reap rich harvest of seats in Maharashtra. Congress is desperate and the alliance partner NCP is having such personalities with criminal background as well. So, the social activists have demanded withdrawal of such candidates from the election arena. It is a matter of time that will provide an answer to all these ways of fielding such secular activists in the name of vote bank politics.

 

Karthik Krishnan

 

 


(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)

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