Page 122 - EW April 2025

Postscript

Air India & education ment) and MLAs.
According to the report, in Karnataka where the aver-
age assets of elected MLAs are valued at a gob-smacking
IR INDIA — INDIA’S FIRST TRANSNATIONAL Rs.63 crore, 122 (55 percent of total) MLAs have criminal
company — was promoted by the private busi- cases and 72 (32 percent) have “serious criminal cases”
Aness house of Tata and J.R.D. Tata in particular, pending against them. In Andhra Pradesh which gets top
in 1932. After independence, because Prime Minister billing, 79 percent of MLAs have criminal and 56 percent
Jawaharlal Nehru’s love of socialism mandated that all serious criminal cases pending against them. However
important companies should be in the public sector and the average assets valued at Rs.63 crore of Karnataka’s
government managed, Air India was nationalised in 1953. blemished MLAs notwithstanding, on March 21 the state
However surprisingly, the national airline managed to assembly unanimously passed a resolution doubling MLA
maintain its reputation because JRD was retained as salaries and allowances. Meanwhile the state’s Congress
chairman until 1978. government has huge pending dues owing to electricity
Ironically, JRD was finally fired by the short-lived distribution companies and can’t fund road repairs. A lot
Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji is rotten in the Silicon Valley state of India.
Desai, one of the few politicians of the time who re-
spected India’s private enterprise tradition. After that the
deluge. Air Marshal P.C. Lall, retired chief of the Indian Grudging professor
Air Force, was appointed chairman of Air India and the
public sector Indian Airlines. But he couldn’t stop the RVIND PANAGARIYA, PROFESSOR OF eco-
neta-babu brotherhood and the lumpen bourgeoisie from nomics at Columbia University, and Chairman
swamping Air India. Unsurprisingly, in 2022 when AI Aof India’s 15th Finance Commission, has written
was de-nationalised by the BJP/NDA government, the a brilliant book titled The Nehru Development Model:
airline had run up a cumulative loss of Rs.50,000 crore, History and Its Lasting Impact (2024) in which he la-
of which Rs.30,000 crore had to be written off by the ments the inorganic Nehruvian public sector-led economy
BJP/NDA government to persuade the Tatas to re-pur- development model imposed upon the country soon after
chase their former airline. independence. Over 345-pages, Prof. Panagariya proves
But despite efforts of the new management, old habits beyond all doubt that Nehru’s project to transform newly
die hard. Recently, an AI flight from Chicago to Delhi was independent India into a Soviet-style socialist republic
obliged to return midway because toilets of an ill-main- was ill-conceived and doomed to failure.
tained aircraft were choked. Investigations revealed that The burden of Panagariya’s book is that even six
all manner of goods including towels, plastic bottles had decades after Nehru and half a century after Nehru’s
been flushed down the toilets. For that, the Tatas are less super-socialist daughter Indira Nehru-Gandhi drove the
to blame than the country’s defunct education system. nation to the edge of bankruptcy, the socialism mindset
How so? An estimated 15,000 government schools don’t dominates the establishment — bureaucracy, academy,
have toilets at all and toilet etiquette is not included in judiciary and the media. However Panagariya’s criticism
school curriculums. What the neta-babu brotherhood of the media — spread over several pages — for failing
never understood — and still doesn’t — is that everything to stand up to poverty-distribution socialism, needs
is connected with education. to be contested. His study of the media is restricted to
one publication, Times of India. According to the good
Deep-rot state professor, the sole journalist who critiqued Nehruvian
socialism was ToI’s Swaminathan Aiyar and mildly, Prem
A Shankar Jha.
CITIZENS’ VOLUNTARY ORGANISATION that
Clearly holed up in his American ivory tower, the
fearlessly exercises its fundamental right of free
good professor is ignorant about the stringent criticism
speech and expression in the public interest is
the Delhi-based Association for Democratic Reforms. of neta-babu licence-permit-quota raj by Business India
and BusinessWorld — India’s first business magazines.
ADR researches the affidavits all candidates contesting For over a decade starting 1978, these two fortnightly
elections to Parliament at the Centre and legislative as- publications panned the pathetic performance of public
semblies are obliged — under Supreme Court directives sector enterprises and rehabilitated routinely vilified
of 2002-03 — to file disclosing their criminal, financial pioneer industrialists such as G.D. Birla, JRD Tata, S.L.
and educational background information to the Election Kirloskar, Rahul Bajaj as business heroes who had kept
Commission. their tax-paying and employment generating enterprises
ADR’s latest report which has a sub-report titled afloat despite every discouragement from the socialism
‘Analysis of Sitting MLAs from 28 State Assemblies and 3 enamoured neta-babu brotherhood.
Union Territories of India 2025’ discloses mind-boggling It was these magazines — Narasimha Rao was report-
information. Karnataka (pop.70 million) from where this edly a reader — that led the charge against Nehruvian so-
publication is written, has the largest number of billion- cialism which was half, not entirely, banished in 1991. But
aire MLAs (members of legislative assembly) — 31 out of with typical academic myopia, Panagariya contends that
a total 224 — of all states of the Indian Union followed by books written once in a quinquennium and establishment
Andhra Pradesh (27) and Maharashtra (17). ADR’s 2025 newspapers that endorsed socialism for decades before u-
report also provides (self-declared) details of criminal turning, prompted liberalisation in 1991. Dear Professor,
cases pending against elected MPs (members of Parlia- give credit — even a little — where it’s due.

122 EDUCATIONWORLD APRIL 2025