The Descent of Air India (16 page)

Even within Air India, there was no precedent to such behavior. Mr Thulasidas’s actions surprised everyone and they did come under scrutiny, although not directly, because no one dared complain against him while he held the top post. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) took note of the ad hoc manner in which procurement orders were being placed by the airline and ordered the removal of V. Srikrishnan, the director of the Department of Materials Management, who had executed most of Mr Thulasidas’s orders. The CVC’s action cast a cloud of suspicion over all the contracts entered into during Mr Thulasidas’s tenure.

A WEB OF FALSE HOPES

The first few months of Mr Thulasidas’s tenure did show promise. He announced to all of us within the company and in the media that he wanted to change the work culture and make Air India a premier airline. A general circular issued to employees advised them to desist from bringing pressure from external agencies—politicians and bureaucrats—for transfers and promotions, and warned that in the event of their doing so, disciplinary action would be taken as per the organisation’s rules of conduct. Unfortunately his words were not matched by action. During his tenure, political interference increased manifold and employees began seeking political patronage quite openly. Unions were allowed to slip back to their belligerent and disruptive ways. And the focus on the customer was lost once again.

Air India did undergo a transformation under Mr Thulasidas, but it wasn’t what he had said it would be. Far from getting into the club of the top five airlines, it hit almost rock bottom in the league tables. It also inculcated work practices that were a far cry from those considered to be the norm in professional organisations. And as investigations by the CAG and parliamentary committees have indicated, the airline was cornered into a financial snake pit on account of some of the decisions taken during this time.

The finance department tried to put out the red flags about Air India’s dire state. They would bring it to his notice every time more loans had to be taken to meet working capital needs, but in vain. Officials from the finance department would express their concern and helplessness at informal interactions with the rest of the senior executives, but their hands were tied.

With the airline’s fortunes in disarray and its reputation under pressure, I felt that it was necessary to challenge the decisions being taken. However, to avoid a direct confrontation with him so soon after he had transferred me out of the HR department at the behest of the unions, I adopted an ingenious method. At Air India, there was a practice of chairmen occasionally writing to the employees about the state of the airline. I decided to draft a letter for him, voicing all the issues that I wished to communicate to him. I hoped that by putting my fears into his words, I would be able to elicit a response from him and possibly influence his actions.

In February 2005, I drafted a letter to be sent from the chairman to the employees in which I set down a list of challenges that Air India faced. The letter discussed how finances would be adversely impacted under the new environment and explored the need to control costs, improve productivity standards and generate more revenues. An underlying message of caution, lest Air India’s survival be threatened, was also incorporated. The letter was sent to Mr Thualsidas for approval and subsequently published in the house magazine,
Magic Carpet
(February–March 2005). It said, ‘If losses mount beyond our control, we would be compelled to curtail our services, as was done in 1997–98, when we withdrew from several international destinations. However, this time, other Indian carriers will be waiting in the wings to fill in the void…There is, therefore, an urgent need for all of us to enhance our product quality to enhance revenue earnings and manpower productivity so that the cost disadvantage that we suffer is neutralised to the extent possible’ (see
Appendix 6
). I had thought that the letter would provoke a comment and some reaction from Mr Thulasidas. But although he approved the draft and signed its release for publication, he did not change his attitude or approach towards the airline’s problems.

RUNNING ON WHIMS AND FANCIES

As the airline’s performance careened to new lows year after year, none could stay immune to the impending catastrophe. Even Mr Thulasidas was perturbed. Instead of tackling the problems at hand with research and rationale, however, he decided to invoke the power of the ancient science of ‘vaastu’. An expert, Raj Shekhar Chawla from Hyderabad was appointed to guide the chairman on which angle to place his desk, where to conduct his meetings with colleagues and which doors to the conference room to keep shut or open. The changes suggested by the experts were duly carried out at substantial expense to the airline.

Another example of how Mr Thulasidas prioritised his personal preferences was his insistence on being escorted to and back from work every day of his tenure. An Air India employee would pick him up from his house every morning and drop him back at his house every evening. And in the mornings, as Mr Thulasidas’s car approached the Air India building, the aide would call a peon at the office and ask him to hold the elevator door open. Mr Thulasidas wanted to walk out of his car straight into the lift and ride up to his office alone! This was something that even the legendary J. R. D. Tata had never done.

Different people viewed his behaviour differently, but it definitely built a distance between him and the rest of the employees of the airline. It also made many of us believe that personal interests were beginning to take precedence over that of the organisation. While there is no reason to castigate a person for personal beliefs, it does become a problem when the line between personal and professional behaviour is blurred.

The fact was that the airline was rapidly turning into the playground of politicians; the government’s approach towards the airline was muddled and political interference the norm. The management team was reduced to being a bystander in its own organisation. Also, it seemed to be business as usual, when we should have been worried about the way Air India was being led, especially as the deadline for the induction of new aircraft drew close.

Two incidents stand out from that period as symbolic of the decay that had seeped into the airline. The first incident concerned Captain N. Beri. He was considered to be close to several politicians and the senior management. One day, after he got off a flight operated for the prime minister, a random check by the custom authorities at the Delhi airport found foreign electronic goods in his baggage. The media rushed to get the true story, and the airline came in for tremendous flak. I told the media, on being asked, that Air India would enquire into the case of purchases and take appropriate action.

The next incident that sullied the airline’s image was the leveling of sexual harassment charges against our regional director in London. The British newspaper
Evening Standard
wrote about it based on the details provided by a woman staffer of a company that had been contracted by Air India. The regional director happened to be transferred to Mumbai during this time, triggering speculation that the airline had acted on the accusations and forced him out of his London posting. When the media asked whether the move was a consequence of the newspaper article, as head of the corporate communications department, I told them that there was no connection as the transfer order predated the complaint by several weeks.

I was moved out of the Corporate Communications Department soon after these incidents. I have come to believe that the chairman was unhappy with the way the media reported on the matter, because he felt that he had been targeted. Although he never revealed the true reasons for his disapproval, my decision to go ahead with the media briefings without his approval may have angered him.

NEW ROLE, NEW CHALLENGES

Mr Thulasidas not only moved me out of my post but also sent me away from the airline’s headquarters. I was posted at the Old Airport Complex of Air India at Kalina, Santa Cruz. In one swoop, I lost my portfolio and the office space that I had occupied since the time I had joined the airline. (I continued to maintain my token presence at the Nariman Point office to perform my other function as the appellate authority for appeals received under the Right to Information Act).

I was disappointed with my transfer, but the deadline for aircraft induction was drawing close. I decided to put my personal grievances aside and focus on the challenges that the new aircraft would pose in terms of interdepartmental coordination as I had been named Director, Co-ordination. The post was looked upon as a sinecure assignment, but I was not willing to treat it as one. It was important more than ever at that time to ensure that interdepartmental channels of cooperation were functioning at their very best. I sent out several e-mails and letters to various departmental heads, asking them for reports on the extent of their readiness and to Mr Thulasidas setting out recommendations for changes in the work culture prior to the induction of aircraft and for other areas that I believed would be pivotal for success with the new aircraft. The letters were well received and the chairman even remarked that some suggestions were ‘good ideas’, but little was done by way of follow-up or for actual implementation. Some recommendations were accepted only to be scrapped later.

My first missive in my new capacity, on 26 September 2006, was to the heads of the operational departments, viz. Operations, Engineering, Ground Services, In-flight Services; support departments like Materials Management and Finance; and, of course, the Commercial Department, which was responsible for enhancing revenues. My letter offered a roadmap for the induction of new aircraft. It set out the issues that had to be tackled and also asked the concerned departmental heads to formulate a time-bound plan that would list all the activities necessary for the smooth induction of aircraft (see
Appendix 7
).

As we have seen earlier, the departments were not used to working together as a cohesive unit and the senior leadership had little control over them. Moreover, since the chairman did not personally induce them to act on my recommendations, they simply ignored the letter. That we eventually faltered at every stage, on every count—whether it was the maintenance of aircraft, providing ground support services, enhancing revenues, having enough pilots or exercising cost control when the aircraft were inducted—shows just how important it was to have set out an agenda at that stage.

In a subsequent letter to Mr Thulasidas titled ‘Our State of Preparedness’, which I wrote on 21 November 2006, eight months before the first aircraft actually arrived, I drew his attention to the flawed work practices that were driving customers away and hence needed attention. My letter insisted that these ‘historical factors in our systems and work culture which haven’t allowed Air India to become a favourite airline of most passengers, particularly those who travel by first and business class’ would come in the way of our becoming a premier airline. And, I wrote, ‘As we are only a few months away from inducting the first of the 50 state-of-the-art aircraft in our fleet, it may be worthwhile to conduct a self-evaluation exercise with regard to progress in relation to these “historical factors” and what needs to be done in the remaining months lest they eventually act as impediments in our efforts to make Air India a premium carrier.’

Mr Thulasidas’s response was: ‘I agree. What do you suggest by way of getting this initiated?’Having suffered at the hands of the unions twice in the past three years—first being removed from the HR department as director and subsequently being denied the board position of the HR director because I wasn’t acceptable to the unions—I was hesitant to put my suggestions down in writing. My views, however, were well known, as I had stated time and again that the airline had to exercise greater control over the unions and its work practices to deliver the best product and service to its fliers.

As the issue was not being addressed by the HR department and the time for the induction of new aircraft was approaching, I drew the attention of the chairman once again to it in January 2007, when I wrote to him, ‘Most of the operational departments have in recent years been attributing cause of passenger complaints, arising out of deficiency in services, to shortage of manpower. Augmentation of fleet through induction of new aircraft, coupled with our desire to provide upgraded service, will only make the problem more acute. As new aircraft will begin joining the fleet effective March 2007, Chairman may like to seek a status report from the operational departments, viz. Operations, Engineering, Inflight Services, Ground Services, Commercial (airport) with regard to recruitment of manpower, training being imparted to new employees and steps being taken to make our existing work practices more productive and customer friendly. This is considered imperative as shortage of adequately trained manpower prior to induction of new aircraft will most certainly hamper efforts to transform Air India as a premium carrier.’

Later, in February 2007, I repeated my concerns to Mr Thulasidas in a letter, where I said, ‘Air India is investing nearly
35,000 crore for acquiring new aircraft. Induction of aircraft in phases will help Air India in significantly improving its product profile. However, if the improved product has to be sustained, deployment of new aircraft will have to be backed by efficient and customer friendly service by employees on ground and on-board the aircraft. There is, therefore, an urgent need for ED-HRD and other qualified HR personnel in the company to take a hard look at the existing working environment to assess whether it is good enough to help us attain excellence;if not what all is required to be done. Corrective action, if needed, will have to be taken now lest the opportunity that is being provided to Air India for being transformed into a premier carrier by the induction of new fleet is frittered away.’ The letter led to a few meetings, but yielded little by way of concrete results. The HR department did nothing, and Mr Thulasidas neither pushed them to change nor penalised them for their lack of action. As a result, when the new aircraft finally joined the fleet in July 2007, the airline was still not ready. Today, Air India is paying a huge price for the dereliction of duty by a select few.