Is socialism about to die in India?

The Tata group, one of India's huge industrial conglomerates, with businesses ranging from steel to tea, from cars to IT, is in talks to buy Air India, India's national carrier. JRD Tata gave birth to Tata Airlines in 1932 and flew its maiden flight from Karachi to Mumbai. In 1953 it was nationalised when it was one of the best airlines in the world. Nehru apparently rebuked JRD saying,"Never talk to me about the word profit; it is a dirty word." How prescient! The company has cumulative debts of Rs 500 billion and the Comptroller and Auditor General reported that the company has been understating its losses. Tata already operates a domestic airline, Vistara, and taking over Air India will give it immediate access to foreign routes and landing spots. Tata must be careful. The merger of Air India with Indian Airlines in 2007 was a disaster, a fact acknowledged by its present CEO, Ashwani Lohani. Being a government company meant that corruption was endemic, and pilots were earning eye-watering salaries for little work. The government desperately wants to get rid of this drain on its revenues but is apprehensive about doing so. Professors Krishna and Dahejia have no doubt that Air India must be privatized right away because privatization of British Airways, Kenya Airways, Air Canada and Singapore Airlines turned them into profit making companies. "Disinvestment of Air India would send absolutely the right message, that India is now a market economy, not a planned economy in which the government clings on to the "commanding heights", and that the Modi government is serious about extending the disinvestment agenda to other potentially sensitive areas." It will not be easy. Any debt write-off will be claimed by Opposition politicians as a gift to Tata in return for kickbacks. And unions will oppose it vociferously. After all, when workers have been used to an easy way of life they will not want to give it up without a fight. But Air India is not the only one. Pubic sector banks are the walking dead of the Indian banking system, wrote Aparna Iyer. They have accumulated so much bad loans that the average bad loans of government banks amount to 75.53% of their net worth, wrote T Bandopadhyay, and in some banks bad loans exceed their net worth. So, these banks are unable to lend money for new projects. Already there are calls to privatize public sector banks but the Finance Minister did not agree with the suggestion last year. Ownership of banks gives politicians opportunities of using our money for dubious projects, such as farmer loan waiver. In fact, the government is proposing merging loss-making public sector companies with ones which are doing well, a very bad idea wrote R Chinchwadkar. Not easy to kill socialism, is it?