EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

Restoring Air India's health

After ten long and agonising days, the strike by the Air India pilots was called off, thanks mainly to the government turning sensible by opting for conciliation over a witch-hunt. With 800 pilots, mostly those who were originally with Indian Airlines, striking work demanding pay parity with their counterparts who had been with Air India prior to the merger, the rate of flight cancellation rose close to 90 per cent towards the end of the strike period. It was left to the Union Civil Aviation Ministry to intervene, negotiate with the pilots union, and bring about a settlement — albeit a temporary one. Considering that the strike, which came at the height of the summer vacation season, resulted in a loss of Rs.150 crore to Rs.200 crore, it is difficult to understand why the government did not intervene earlier. The strategy and methods of the Air India management clearly worsened the situation. The basic demand of the pilots was neither new nor unreasonable: they have been seeking pay parity ever since the merger process began in 2007. It is hard to explain why the process should drag on endlessly and why most of the demands of the staff have not been seriously addressed for such a long time.

Under the interim settlement, the Ministry has given some concrete assurances. All the dismissed and suspended pilots will be reinstated; the de-recognition of the Indian Commercial Pilots' Association will be revoked; and all the other demands of the pilots will be addressed in a “time-bound” manner. The key issue of pay parity will be dealt with by the Dharmadhikari committee, which has just begun to look into the staff-related issues arising from the merger of the two airlines, and it has been required to give the report by November 2011. All categories of employees have been asked to approach it with their demands. At least this time, the Air India management must keep its word and resolve the issues by adopting a businesslike consultative process in all seriousness and sincerity. For their part, the employees and their unions must respond positively to the challenges that lie ahead. Though the national carrier has been claiming “operational profits,” the accumulated losses and its undue dependence on funding by government tell a different story. Air India needs to be run on sound commercial lines, which means it must not be discriminated against vis-à-vis the private airlines. For that to happen, it must set its own house in order, go ahead and complete its programme for aircraft acquisition, do everything necessary to restore the prestige of the ‘Maharajah' brand in a competitive environment, and win back customer loyalty.

Britain rejects reform

In a national referendum, the British electorate has rejected, by 69 per cent to 31 per cent on a turnout of 42 per cent, the Alternative Vote (AV) system for elections to the House of Commons. Under AV, voters rank candidates in order of preference, and if a candidate gets 50 per cent of first-preference votes, he or she wins the seat. If none reaches that figure, the second preferences of the candidate who comes last are redistributed, and so on until one candidate reaches 50 per cent of the total number of votes cast. The current simple majority (SM) system has been found wanting on many counts. Very few British MPs win their seats with even 40 per cent of the vote, which means the principle of representativeness suffers. Three quarters of seats are safe for one or the other of the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, which in practice means safe regions, such as the largely Tory south of England, and millions of wasted votes. Significant third parties such as the Liberal Democrats can record a quarter of the national vote-share but win only a few seats. The simple majority system tends to gift the main parties overpowering Commons majorities on aggregate vote-shares of about 40 per cent.

Unfortunately, the political context of the referendum obscured the issues. For one thing, it was held on the same day as elections to the local governments and to the Scottish and Welsh assemblies. Secondly, the LibDems, the strongest proponents of electoral reform, have paid a heavy price for their May 2010 decision to enter into a Tory-led coalition. They have lost backing from disaffected Labour voters, and have divided their own supporters through unprincipled policy compromises with Prime Minister David Cameron. This, in part, turned the AV question into a referendum on the LibDem leader Nick Clegg, and may have made the Labour leader Ed Miliband temper his public support for AV. The Labour Party is split on voting reform; many Labour heavyweights combined with Tories to attack it. The AV proposal was itself a coalition compromise; the LibDems favour the fully proportional Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. With AV decisively rejected, the United Kingdom will have to live with parliaments that do not represent the range of political opinion among voters. In 2001, a fully proportional system would have given the LibDems at least 120 MPs, instead of the 52 they got under SM. That would have virtually guaranteed defeat for Prime Minister Tony Blair's proposal to invade Iraq. There can be few better examples of the damage done to national policy by parliaments that are formally but not substantively representative of their people.