Book Review

Sarangi Uthaman

1627654

MBA I 2nd Trimester

In the book, Bhargava says that the  Air India reached a bad state, due to
government interference and bad decisions. He also writes about the servile
attitude of Air India towards minister Patel. He also points out other reasons of
its downfall, which include bilateral agreements which were unprofitable,
cancellation of flights on profitable routes or giving them to other airlines, and
acquisitions of planes at high prices and selling them at very low prices.
The book also says that Air India had deals to buy 111 planes
from Boeing and Airbus in 2005-2006, along with the merging with the Indian
Airlines which was one reason for its downfall. It says that Praful Patel and V.
Thulasidas, former Air India chairman were responsible for this. It also says that
Praful Patel was aware of Air India's shrinking marketing and yet was giving
bilateral rights to foreign airlines. The book also points out the frequent changes
in the management of the company.
The author says that no one person or agency, but several people are responsible
for Air India's collapse like the unions, the politicians and bureaucrats and the
overly submissive chairmen and managing directors of the airline. But above
all, it was the hurried and half-hearted merger of the domestic (Indian Airlines)
and the international (Air India) entities that killed the latter.

He also says how Air India's decline was facilitated by its own employees, who
were not committed enough and did not move in the right direction when it was
required. They were more inclined towards supporting the chairmen and
ministers which served their personal benefits rather than supporting the
organisation.
The HR department was weak and they didn’t not even train the employees
properly which was adding to the troubles faced by Air India. Delayed flights
and bad on board experiences lead to declining customers.

Even though many policies were introduced, none of the policies were
implemented properly one example is the Productivity linked payment for the
pilots it was weakly structured so the employees found loopholes and it was
never did any good for the company.

Since it was a government job the employees were very casual in their approach
they knew they would not be sacked and would get a promotion in the long run.

The expansion plan which was not properly planned was one reason of Air
India’s failure. They didn’t have the budget and neither was the market
condition favourable to them. Thulsidas (Chairman) and Praful (Civil Aviation
minister) was in a hurry to merge Air India and Indian Airlines and they had
made a mockery of Air India in managing people.