Penny Wise Pound Foolish Air Travel Business of India !

Long ago, I had the opportunity to have scores of foreigners as my fellow student companions in a reputed engineering institution in North India. Many of them were from poor African nations, deputed by their respective governments for higher technical studies in India where they considered the education cheaper than many of the western countries. They were having generally good opinion about India but some of them were outright candid in telling some things they disliked about India, especially about Indians.

I still remember their unanimity in telling that Indians are too money minded and greedy. At that time, I did not have much experience to agree with them. In fact, it pained me much when these young people considered those of my nationality of such bad quality in their eyes.

Some of them also used the idiom ' Penny-wise-pound-foolish' when referring to Indians.

The other day I had to travel from my home city Ranchi to another nearby city Nagpur which is about 900 odd kilometers away for some official work. Both cities are well connected by rail trunk lines and have good airports. But as matters stand now, there is no direct air connectivity between these two cities. More over, if you want to go by the cheaper railway, you have to plan at least two to four months in advance if you want to get the rail coach seat reserved for the journey. The two cities are connected by national high ways also, but only insane people in India would try to use the roads for long distance travel. I have written about it in some other blogs.

To tell you in short, I had to spend nearly Rs 20,000/- and spend nearly 12 hours in the airports and the airplanes to accomplish this short travel, that too just one way. They had to show me Delhi and Mumbai too before dropping me off at Nagpur ! Anyway, the loss is to my company. Why should I bother ?

To my surprise I find the flights connecting the metros flying with less than 40 % load factor and lowest fares while those to tier two cities like Nagpur and Ranchi flying 100% full with the highest possible fares ! Do not try to analyse the business economics or the business logic here. That is the Indian way of doing business !  

Spacious sans Passengers- A view of Mumbai Airport Reserved for Air India !

This perhaps happens because of the greed of Indian business men and the high headiness of the Indian policy makers alike. Both of them seem working complimentary to each other to bring about such irrational scenarios! It is common knowledge that with this kind of money, that I had to spend for covering a distance of 900 km in India, I could very well have a fully paid pleasure trip for a couple of days to some good Asian cities like Singapore, Malaysia, Bangkok and the like. It is not the shortage of the passengers or the planes. It is something connected with lack of brains or an opulence of it in some quarters connected with the planning and implementation of domestic air travel.

A Coffee n Snacks Stall of Delhi Airport where Seven Star Cofee and Tea are Sold !

In Delhi airport, I had to move all the way from one gigantic airport terminal to the other for catching the connecting flight to the next city enroute. It is a harrowing experience ! No one can dare to send their children or elderly family members or not-so-sophisticated ones not understanding Hindi or English alone on a flight from one city to the other where he or she has to alight plane in the metros like Delhi for taking the connection flight. No doubt, they will be lost for ever ! 

After the trouble in having the inter terminal transit walking with my cabin baggage I thought of taking a tea or coffee in the first tea shop which came to my vision. A so-so tea just as the one  you get any where including that you get in the AC first class coaches of the Indian Railways in the super trains like the Rajdhani Express. Only difference was the cost. I had to curse silently the greed of all concerned with this situation when I had to shell out more than Rs 100 /- for a cup of tea and the additional service tax. My country's planners are going to make lot of money for the betterment of the country this way !

Reserved Toilets for Staff at Passenger Area at Mumbai Airport !

In Mumbai I took shelter in one of the empty benches in the arrival hall waiting hours for moving on to the departure side to take the next flight. Here I was surprised to find toilets reserved for staff members only. Why do they want to show this arrogance to the passengers ? But then it is India !

The security aspects of the airports are now with the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), thanks to the terrorist scare ! These paramilitary jawans are one of the elite class forces of India. They do their job nicely without much harassment to the passengers. But they do cause incovenience that too for mundane things with irrationality of the highest order. Some of them will not allow mineral water to be taken in the cabin bag. Some allow. For some the mobile phones and lap tops can be inside your bag sent for x-ray scan. But some of them will not allow that. They need those things to be taken out and kept in plastic trays. Imagine the confusion these things create in the long queues and the problems that they create for the passengers especially for those who are new. When things are like this here, one has to laugh at the manner at which the cabin crew routinely showing the safety drill as per the air traffic rules. It seems that the security jawans operate without such rules to guide the new passengers !

One of the Promising Indian Private Airline Airbus A320 waiting for take off at Delhi Airport

I watched a sign board at Delhi Airport which prominently and proudly displayed the number of passengers who used this airport last year. It said it was 11.4 Million.

 

Delhi Airport's Private Operator Proudly Displaying the High Traffic Record !

If those passengers decided to take at least one cup of coffe or tea from this airport, they made Rs 1140 million out of it. If such an amount is made, the major chunk of that would be going to the airport's private management who in turn got the right to make that kind of money by paying the government either directly or indirectly. But I seriously doubt about such a possibility. That is the nature of Indians. Even when they can afford, no Indian is going to pay exorbitant price for a tea or coffee which they can get at much lower cost just outside. Had they kept the tea at a reasonable cost of say Rs 10 or 20, most of them would have readily and gladly paid for it ! Obviously, the airport business fellows should have lost a good opportunity ! Regrettably, they seem to prefer killing the goose which lays golden eggs !

And all of them keep doing that.

Otherwise why there are so many of those planes costing billions of dollars that lie idle in the airports ? Their engines and mechanisms are rusting ! What if all these belonged to some business men like Mr Mallya ? What caused his company to ruin financially ? Is it only because of his mismanagement or it has also to do some thing with the irrational policies and irresponsible attitudes of the government agencies ?

Is it only the problem of  business men like Mr Mallya ? Is it not something of a problem affecting the people of India ?

You can keep arguing both ways !

I think I have to agree with my old African friends.

Indians are penny wise and pound foolish. Their penny wisdom blinding their pound foolishness always ! Their greed and egos rule their minds more than simple common sense driven by the passion to do good for others !

Why should even God think of saving this country ?

[View the linked list of all Blogs of the Author Here ! ]

Modern Time Wasting Quality Management Systems !

Way back in the Nineteen Seventies, when I was an engineering student, computers had been making a big appearance in the world, emerging from their secret production sites located mainly in the United States of America.

The majority of people knew nothing of computers. But many of them had heard about this magic machine of the 20th century. But those who knew a bit more had apprehensions too. That is why some of them kept warning those top optimists about the dangers of  the 'rubbish- in- rubbish- out' (RIRO) kind of situation that is likely with the computer dominated world.

In my life time I have seen this transformation taking place. I have also seen the riro situation also that got developed in the world in most of the work areas. The computer helps in reducing work loads of some and simultaneously enhances the load in other areas !

Anyway, that is what I wanted to write in this blog. It is some thing else which got developed in the 20th century in a big way for giving benefits to the society. Here too I find it as a coin having two sides !

I refer to the modern Quality Management Systems generally now known as the ISO 9000 series.

Before starting what I am going to say, let me apologize sincerely to all the modern management consultants , consulting companies and a host of their institutions and organizations worldwide who keep producing massive documentations and presentations so vigorously and painfully that have helped immensely to make the Art of Management of the past to the Management Science of the present !

I honour their dedicated works. Because they who do it are doing it sincerely with full devotion. If I say some thing without much knowledge about their great works that might appear as foolish criticism to any thing coming under the domain of  management experts and gurus, even inadvertently, I should make the apology in advance.

During the initial years of my professional career, for a couple of years  I was a first line manager of a chemical process plant which operated on a semi-continuous manner. The plant operating staff who manned the various operations of the plant were required to maintain the quality and quantity of production in the desired levels. As the chemical processes kept happening inside the process vessels and pipes, for an outsider who visited the plant at any time could only see the plant personnel in the plant sitting here and there without doing anything. Apparently they appeared to others without any work ! Their actual works were all momentary that it was difficult for outsiders to know more about their jobs by watching them for some time. During those days I found it as one of the difficult task for me to make the top management of the company and the management systems departments such as the Industrial Engineering Department (IED in short not to be confused with the present popular IED which stands for Improvised Explosive Device which is of prime attraction to the mass media!) to understand the nature of the jobs of my people and the justifying the need of those plant operating personnel. The work of justifying the work often hindered the efficacy of the actual work ! This Industrial Engineering in itself was a great fad in those days in India that many industries had powerful IEDs which decided how many people were required in other works departments. Good or bad, the IEDs have almost become a non-existent thing in 21st century India. I do not know much about other countries !

The practice those days was something like this. If I needed a person to be recruited for doing a work in my department, I make a projection for 5 people, get it studied by the IED who eventually cut it to three based on their 'scientific work-time studies' and the two got further bargained at higher levels and ultimately I getting a minimum two instead of the one I really needed. A win-win situation for all concerned ! Had the management trusted the actual man concerned they never would have needed all those management time wasting carried out for months to decide 100 percent extra man-power !

But trust is a word which does not exist in the management dictionary !

Modern management and management systems are devised on the presumption that people cannot be trusted ! If you say that a wild lion cannot be trusted it is understandable. But if you say that a human being of the 21st century cannot be trusted then what is being said ultimately would equate man and beast on the same level.

The IED of the 20th century has reappeared now as various systems of management now emerging under one umbrella called the ISO 9000 series .

Is it doing any good ?

Of course! But that is perhaps for its practitioners and advocates !

Recently, a customer asked an expert opinion from an engineer working in an ISO 9001 certified engineering consultancy company.

Our engineer knows how to satisfy his customer by giving his expert advice in a moment.

In earlier years he had done that many times.

But now his organisation follows approved systems and procedures in accordance with the ISO certification. Unfortunately this kind of an advice is not listed now in the approved procedures .

Our engineer explained in detail his helplessness to the customer.

Poor customer ! He is slowly understanding what ISO means !

It is time for all those companies who pay through their nose and keep spending their time and efforts to get and maintain this ISO certification to do a rethinking.

I am just initiating a thought process !


[A special note added on 20-11-12: Mr Gunnar Rundgren, former CEO Grolink AB and the present President of IFOAM has authored a blog ' Quality management is a management fad elevated to divinity' in support of what I have written above. He has made a comment below giving the link to his article which I am providing here, conveniently clickable.

The major problem why the QMS under ISO 9001 would eventually bring about disasters for the organization is because of the luke warm or half hearted approach of the top management. QMS under ISO 9001 is envisaged as a management system standard where top management commitment, honesty and competence is of prime importance. I would like my readers, who are interested, to read this article : The Rise and Fall of ISO9001 written by Mr Ashok M Thakkar, President & CEO of ITTI Llc Roswell, Georgia.]

What Will You Do If It Happens in Your Life ?

Yesterday I got a call from a person whom I had known well some decades ago. Without him elaborating, I perceived that he was in great distress. He was hesitant to tell or ask for a help. He needed something at that moment to save him and his family from immediate financial ruin. I am happy that I could do something yesterday for him even though it might not sustain him for ever. That in any case is up to the invisible ministers of the universe administration who are all around us !

Any way to tell you the truth, giving is a great pleasure. A pleasure you have to know for yourself. Much more than what you get from receiving. Again, if you are in a position to give, it is a higher privilege vested on you !

I would like to tell some thing more about the person who called me yesterday. When I met him the first time, he was an engineering technician cum supervisor of an engineering construction company. This company was entrusted with some chemical plant erection contract for my company where I used to function as the engineer- in-charge. This was some time in the early 1980's.

He spoke my mother tongue and hence in another couple of days he became very close to me. I found him a very talented technician with superb skills in engineering erection and construction. He did not possess any worthy certificates of formal education. But his skills and knowledge he gained through practical experience and observations were commendable. He was also a good leader for his team of construction workers. I found that his company was making a good fortune simply depending on the skills of this man.

One day I pointed out this to him and encouraged him to set up his own construction contract firm. He acted on it with some initial guidance from me and soon established a very successful engineering construction company. He bagged a few independent contracts and soon his company prospered with very good profits and financial status. I remember the time when he brought his first graduate engineer and first qualified accountant he recruited for his firm to me and introduced them to me. 

Soon there after he became so immersed in his business that his contact with me snapped. For some more time I used to hear about him. By this time he had become a really wealthy man. Wealth and money with him were much more than an engineer like me could amass in a life time ! Later I also learnt that he was very influential in the local politics also as some of the political leaders who became very prominent later were his proteges.

Nearly two decades later, he appeared to me all of a sudden in a new prominent restaurant that was opened in the area where me and my wife had gone to dine. He was the owner of the restaurant. He told me that he had he had diversified his business. Though he was showing due respect to me, he talked much about his influences and holds in politics, police and the like. He offered me any help with his battalion of goons that he had raised for his protection and maintenance of business activities, if at all I needed some of those !

My God ! What a transformation money and power can bring about ! I thought .

Nearly another decade passed. One fine morning I was surprised to find him in my office.

This time, he was a ruined man. His money and wealth had all gone. He was now facing successive failures. But he was confident of making a come back !

Then I did not hear from him for another year. Then one day, he came to my house.

He wanted to tell me his story. I listened. He was still a ruined man financially. It was difficult for me to believe that he did not have anything even to buy food for the day.

But, yet he appeared to be happier and pious than he was an year ago when he met me in my office.

Then he told me another thing. He told me that he and his family are now followers of Jesus Christ.

It was something difficult for me to believe. He was a staunch Hindu and a supporter of a militant ideology earlier !

Who converted him ? None. That was what he said. He was converted to be a christian by none other than Jesus Christ ! Too difficult for me to digest, being a nominal christian my self !

Was it his financial ruin that forced him for this change of mind ?

Perhaps yes. But the financial ruin had forced him to attempt suicide en masse with his family. But at that time of great distress when they were about to die, it was Jesus who brought about a change in them. A change to live a different life ! That was what he told me !

I could read the sparkle of happiness in his eyes, even at the time of great uncertainty in continuing with his earthly life. Later I met his wife and his children. I found the same in their eyes too.

I kept observing him in his trials and tribulations of earthly life in his new way of life. Perhaps this time he was facing more troubles. But yet he and his family continued to sustain triumphantly. There were inducements to go back to his earlier way of life. Perhaps he could make his life materially successful once again. But I find them not willing to do that for the transcendental joys they have found now.

There are things in this world which are beyond our understanding !

While I type this in, another story also came into my mind which thought of sharing with you all.

While I was a small boy, I used to hear about one of the brothers of my grand mother, who at that time served the lone international airline company of India at that time as a pilot.

He was an aristocrat of our family having married to a lady from similar backgrounds while we all remained at our villages as their crude country relatives.

As a boy I had an immense desire to meet this great uncle of mine who flew airplanes, a rare fascinating machine of those days.

I used to hear our family members talking about his life styles, his salaries and the like. While we went to village schools, his children never went to schools for studies, which used to be for lesser mortals. Instead, they were taught at home by tutors to make them pass the prestigious Cambridge school certificate examinations.

We never had an opportunity to meet him or his family while he flew over the globe.

Then some time in early nineteen sixties, the news about his losing job percolated to the family circles. He was suspended pending enquiry for some irregularity at the fag end of his career.

For a couple of years he sustained by consuming all that were at his disposal to come to a naught at some time later.

He fell from a height, down to stark realities of life ! They had relatives and friends elsewhere. He could have approached some of them with whom he was in contact. Those who matched his life style earlier.

But the stark truth all of a sudden made him realize that such friends and relatives are of no use when you are in real trouble. Aristocrats have no time for failing fellows ! Even he would have done the same way had he remained in the same fashion !

So what is next for the aristocrat who was defeated in life ?

Death ?  Yes, that is what the rule book of theirs said.

So this great uncle with his entire family decided to end their lives one fine day. They had faced a humiliating reality of life with no possible solution.

But his youngest son in his pre-teens spoiled their plans.

It was this time that some of the other family members extended a helping hand.

My father was one among them.

That resulted in this great uncle living in our home for more than three years. As a high school boy at that time I got the opportunity to learn many things from this man who was also a royal air force pilot of world war-2. He had become a  down to earth friend of mine !

Many times this thought used to come to my mind.

What would I do if such a thing happen in my life ?

I do not know.

It's a difficult thing.

But it does happen with many in this world.

Money, wealth and power do come and bless many abundantly. But it also could vanish all of a sudden just as it came !

So what have I learnt from these ?

First, if I am not abundantly blessed with these, I should be happy.

God is listening to my daily prayer: " Father, give us this day the daily bread ."

But if He bestows more than that, it is an additional responsibility. I should be careful. I should consciously make efforts not to get carried away by this wealth, money or power.

I should make conscious efforts not to hurt others with these material power gadgets that are under my command. I should feel humbled and should think of using these for the benefit of others, if possible.

If I do not, what is going to happen ? Perhaps nothing.

But I would indeed lose the opportunity to help.

An opportunity to get refreshed by the joy and pleasure that the god within me radiated from deep inside me.

Observing all these, I guess,  I am learning the meaning of this prayer that Jesus taught:

"Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil."

That I have been reciting almost every day for years !

But now in real life situations, I prefer to go by the advice of Jesus to the rich man, as narrated in my favorite book :

" When in honest doubt about the equity and justice of material situations, let your decisions favor those who are in need, favor those who suffer the misfortune of undeserved hardships.”