Former Infosys top official Mohandas Pai is justified when he sees a similarity between Vijay Mallya lynching state owned banks of valuable cash and national carrier Air India doing likewise as thousands of crores of tax payers money is infused in it every year to keep it afloat inspite of mounting losses which are multiple times more than what Mallya owes to banks as well as other stakeholders. Air India is made to survive artificially today so that government officials, ministers, bureaucrats and their tribe can travel free of cost with their families. Same is the case of many state owned companies like HMT, MTNL etc which today generate huge losses year after year but kept in business on account of vested interest.
There is no accountability of public money in our country which is truly sad in a democratic setup. Competition is the key to survive and companies incurring losses be it in the private sector or run by state with tax payers money has no right to be in business if they cannot breakeven for years at stretch. If Vijay Mallya today is been rightly hounded for his misdeeds for siphoning of bank money, the same yardstick should apply to those who are responsible for the losses of Air India and other companies. There is no morality left today and I completely agree with Mohandas Pai when he says that business losses can be digested but not the luxurious lifestyle of people responsible for them. Similar comparison can be made of ministers who have affluent lifestyle but the companies that work on their orders running under deep order. Loss making companies should be sold off and money received from such deals should be used for infrastructure which would fuel nations growth in the years to come. Honest citizens like Mohandas Pai, Deepak Parekh, Narayan Murthy and their tribe who possess vast corporate knowledge should form a panel to guide the government to dispose of businesses which are eating tax payers money!
S.N. Kabra
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
