July 21, 2025

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HOW TO FIX AIR INDIA

Just 10 days before the London Gatwick-bound Air India flight AI 171 crashed within seconds of takeoff in Ahmedabad on June 12, the airline had been busy staging its most high-profile media blitz since privatisation. On the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) annual general meeting in New Delhi from June 1-3, Air India's MD and CEO Campbell Wilson, flanked by the company's senior brass, met over 30 top aviation writers and editors from India and abroad. An upbeat Wilson spoke of how, three years after the Tata Group took over the beleaguered public sector airline, it had moved from a phase of stabilisation to one of sufficiency--finally having enough aircraft to fuel its ambitions. The next goal: sharpening operational efficiency. The makeover programme titled `Vihaan.AI', which was unveiled in September 2022 and was slated to transform Air India as "a global airline with an Indian heart" in five years, was said to have reached a very satisfying halfway markThat image came undone with the crash of Air India's Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner--one of the deadliest in India's aviation history, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and at least 19 on the ground. The disaster thrust the Tata-owned airline into the harsh glare of media and regulatory scrutiny. In its immediate aftermath, the airline cancelled 83 international flights within a week and then announced a 15 per cent reduction in its widebody international operations through mid-July. Even as a high-powered, multi-agency committee, chaired by the Union home secretary, was given three months to probe the crash and suggest reforms, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on June 20 pulled up Air India for repeated violations of crew duty norms and ordered the removal of three senior officials. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is learnt to have submitted its preliminary crash report to the Centre, though the findings remain undisclosedSo, how did things come to this sorry pass? That too for a conglomerate that had an emotional stake in trying to reclaim its place in the sky? After all, Air India was born in 1932 as Tata Airlines, India's first aviation company. Founded by the iconic J.R.D. Tata, the group had lost control of the airline upon its nationalisation in June 1953. So when the Tatas formally re-acquired Air India nearly 70 years later--on January 27, 2022--it marked the end not only of a long phase

CITIZENSHIP ON TRIAL

Eight-thirty am on July 6 should have been a drowsy Sunday morning, the hour when rural Bihar typically stirs to the hum of ket tles and the rustle of early chores. Yet, at Bal deva High School in Danapur, nestled in ru ral Patna district, the atmosphere inside the large conference room was brisk, animated and alert. Some 50 voters, and an equal num ber waiting outside, overwhelmingly women from modest rural backgrounds, stood in line clutching their Aadhaar cards and, in many cases, their husbands' voter IDs, their expressions a mix of confusion and cautious hopeSeated at a round table, five Booth Level Officers (BLOs), each flanked by at least one assistant, methodically pored over forms, scanning documents and crossverifying entries against the electoral rolls. Two supervisors hov ered nearby, observing the quiet precision of the choreography. Once done at this camp, which they expected to achieve by 12:30 pm, the BLOs would hit the road again, reaching out to houses across rural Patna, continuing the doortodoor verification process. Armed with thick registers and pre printed forms, they are among the nearly 100,000 BLOs embarked on an extraordi nary mission since June 25: to verify the citi zenship credentials of every one of Bihar's 79 million voters in just 31 days. A day earlier, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had launched what it called a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, setting off a political firestorm that may soon engulf the nation's democratic machineryThe ECI defended its decision with con stitutional gravity. Chief Election Commis sioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar pointed to Article 326, which mandates that only In dian citizens above 18 can vote, and invoked the commission's duty to maintain clean electoral rolls. The timing, he insisted, was driven by necessity rather than politics. In the preceding four months, the ECI had con ducted nearly 5,000 meetings with 28,000 political party representatives across India. "No one was satisfied with the current status of electoral rolls for one reason or the other," Kumar said. The ECI's June 24 notification laid out the rationale: rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, nonreporting of deaths and, crucially, the inclusion of names of "foreign illegal immigrants"Understanding the SIR requires navigating India's complex system of elec toral roll maintenance. The Registration of Electors Rules of 1960 defines three pri mary methods: intensive revision, summary revision, and partly summary and partly intensive revision. A fourth type, special summary revision, addresses specific pock ets of concern within a state (see The Voter List Clean-up).