Ashwani Lohani is known as a “turnaround man” for having made a success of the loss-making Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation which he headed. However, can a mammoth like Air India — with losses totalling Rs 40,000 crore and reportedly heading for a loss of Rs 3,900 crore for the year ended March 31, 2014, after a loss of Rs 5,100 crore the previous year — be compared to the MPTDC? Perhaps
Mr Lohani feels he can take on the challenge. He tweeted as much in July 2009, “If given a chance, of course, a year is all it would take for a turnaround, even for a mammoth like Air India.” However, in May 2014, while observing that AI’s continuous loss was “inexcusable, a bureaucratic disaster on expected lines”, he said, “Obliging masters at the helm, what else would happen?” These are indeed brave words, but they give a ray of hope.
There is a view that AI needs a professional management. Whilst that seems logical, most of the other loss-making airlines are professionally managed. So that alone is not the problem. Besides, AI has a legacy problem as the earlier government tried to cripple it by giving away its lucrative routes to private carriers. It also has a bloated staff and pilots willing to sacrifice the airline’s image for their own agenda. We hope that Mr Lohani, an engineer, will be able to win over the employees and resolve the contentious issue of the hasty merger of IA with Air India among other things. We wish him luck.
