Air Travel Crisis and Fireball in Dance Floors: What do they say about India’s growth story?

The Narendra Modi Government never lost a chance to keep repeating on its tall claims about the growth story that was India ever since this administration came to power more than a decade ago. Whatever problems the country faced were all the remnants of the misrule of the past governments and had nothing to do with the present government and its policies.

This has been the default position of the Sangh Parivar outfits when they are faced with questions about the terrible consequences of ill-conceived policies of the government or its misrule in recent years. They have a powerful propaganda machine and they are firm believers in the Gobblesian theory that an untruth repeated a thousand times would sound like truth to the gullible folks in the streets.

They have had a successful run in this devilish scheme of public relations, for which the government and the ruling party have spent huge amounts of money and resources. This inflated balloon could be deflated by anyone who raises uncomfortable questions in a public forum and hence the consistent strategy to keep the independent media under a tight leash and refusing to hold even a press conference, which is mandatory for a prime minister in any democratic country.

But such a situation of false narratives cannot hold good for a long time. At some point, the truth must come out whether the rulers like it or not. For the Narendra Modi Government, this moment appears to be such an occasion when the chicks are coming home to roost as it finds it necessary to answer some questions on its accountability.

Two recent incidents, the total collapse of air travel at the peak of travel season and the terrible incident of massive fire in a dance floor in Goa, are examples of the total lack of accountability on the part of the BJP governments, both at the Centre as well as in the States. Both have had a direct bearing on the government policies and its refusal to enforce strict rules and accountability at every levels.

Take the case of the crisis in air travel. Tens of thousands of travellers had been stranded in all major airports in all parts of India for the past one week, simply because the government could not force a singe airline, the Indigo, to comply with the revised cabin crew and pilot duty norms to ensure air safety. The Directorate of Civil Aviation had circulated the mandatory changes in duty time, number of flight landings for a pilot at night time in a week, etc, to ensure better safety conditions as the country had faced a number of serious air accidents in recent years.

But the Indigo management simply refused to comply by the rules and when the rules were enforced last week, their services went haywire and thousands of regular fights cancelled. The situation still remains dire and large numbers of air passengers are faced with untold difficulties and losses, as a result.

Despite such massive disruptions, the Central Government has failed to take firm action. Instead of taking over the airline company for failure to comply with rules, they have caved in and given more time to the company to follow the rules! This is really surprising, as it sends out a message that rules are only for the poor and the weak and they can be flouted by the high and mighty.

In Goa, where the BJP government has been in power for a long time, the same appears to have been the case with the gruesome night club fire, where every rule had been broken or ignored by the owners as well as the administrators. There has not been any fire safety mechanisms, nor any license to run the night club in the middle of a water body, in complete violation of every act in the rule book. Still, they could continue to run the business unmindful of any interference from the government.

Time for the people to ask tough questions as to how and why the rich and powerful are able of flout every rule, while the poor face all the heavy burden of this selective application of the rule of law?

Mohammad Elyas Thumbe
National General Secretary