This is a photograph that I cherish a lot. Both the sunglass and the bike is special for me. They were presents from my eldest sister. I took great care of both and had them with me for a long long time. The photograph was shot by my eldest brother on the first floor porch of our old house at Colonlegunj. I must not have been going to school then and was perhaps around four or five years old. Schooling in those days started late, there was no concept of nursery education. Children learnt their first alphabets and the three R's at home, usually from their mother. By the time it was felt that I was ready for school, I could read, write and speak English, Hindi and Bengali; could carry out the four basic functions of maths and knew a bit of history and geography and science. I was directly admitted to Class 2. The bike had multiple uses, apart from being a normal bike used for riding. Sometimes it will turn to car racing furiously through the city's busy thoroughfare chasing the robbers, at other times it will turn into a horse driven carriage that we called tonga, occassionally it will be converted into a rickshaw and quite incredibly perhpas, sometimes it will turn into film projecter screening my favourite film. Incidentally a childrens' film Jagrati was my favourite. I had a happy and secure childhood. Perhaps slightly overawed by the presence of elder brothers and sisters; all seven of them, but nevertheless carefree and enjoyable.

Merger of Air India and Indian Airlines Advantages of and justification for merger

1. Will lend competitive strength: The combined revenue (2004-05) of the two airlines would be Rs. 13040 crore that would place the merged entity at 35 in the world ranking as against the present ranking of 48 in case of Air India and 70 in case of India Airlines. The ranking would further improve to 20 with induction of new fleet. The market power that would accrue from the financial muscle would fortify the ability of the merged unit to take on competition even in the international market, which has been witnessing increasing dominance of global airlines alliances.
2. Will make acquisition of cutting edge technologies possible: To compete successfully it is not enough to have a sound financial backing the crucial edges to surge ahead of competition and stay there is provided by continuous upgrading of service through, among other things, acquisition of newer and better technologies. These technologies are invariably expensive which only major, financially strong airlines can afford.
3. Will help in controlling cost: A characteristic of airline business is high operating cost that smaller and/or inefficient airlines often find difficult to control. One of the consequences of merger would be the possibility to eliminate a number of common items of expenses, like marketing, advertisement etc.; that will help in controlling operating cost and stay competitive.
4. Will help in improving market share: Market share of both Air India and Indian Airlines has witnessed a secular fall since 1990 (from 24.5% and 100% respectively in 1990 to 19.5% and 31% in 2005). Understandably competition has affected Indian Airline much more than Air India. The two airlines have been competing with each other in some of the sectors and eroding market share. Merger would eliminate this kind of unproductive competition and help in improving combined market share.
5. Size of the airline is a crucial factor: As in many other things in aviation too size of the airline makes a difference not so much to profitability but to marketing strategy. In public perception size of a company is often associated with reliability. A customer tends to have greater confidence on bigger airlines for delivering service of acceptable quality. Thus most airlines take great care to add lines like, ‘largest airline in the world/country/particular part of the country’, etc.; even those who are fourth or fifth insert the number in their advertisements. Moreover, it is also true that it takes a long time for a big airline to go out of business but small airlines can vanish from one day to the next.
6. Will provide large network: In recent years Indian aviation has been witnessing rapid development in several fields. After years of low growth the sector has been recording unprecedented growth. With almost doubling of capacity and more routes opening up yields are dropping, in this situation value of large network is critical for full service carriers like Air India and Indian Airlines.
7. Competition will only harden: In past five years as a result of open skies with the USA, near open skies with UK/ASEAN/SAARC along with liberal bilateral agreement with Germany, France and China there has been huge increase in entitlements/new routes for foreign airlines. Domestic airlines have been allowed to fly overseas, forge partnerships with foreign carriers while foreign carriers in their turn have been interlining with domestic airlines to access secondary destinations. Whereas, some private airlines have already developed large networks and are in a position to fill international flights with ease some more domestic airlines will qualify for international operations in next 3-4 years and by then they too will have large network. In short, all these developments point towards competition getting more tough in the coming years, a situation that a bigger airline would be in a better position to face and negotiate.
8. Attractive partner for global alliance: Globally the trend in the aviation sector is towards alliances. Individually Air India and Indian Airlines bring negligible value to any global alliance, but together with integrated domestic/international networks they become very attractive.

Matters that need attention The above presents a strong argument for merger. There is little doubt that taking a broader perspective and a long-term view merger of the two airlines would be beneficial. However, it is necessary to bear in mind that on its own merger will not necessarily lead to improvement in performance; merger can be termed as a necessary condition for success but not the sufficient condition. Successfully merging two airlines and capturing the theoretical value of that merger is a major management challenge. One needs to lay the groundwork for effective integration, taking into account the host of questions involved in airline merger. Some of the issues that need to be addressed to ensure that merger produces the desired results are discussed below.

1. Market share: There is no a priori reason to believe that merger will lead to an improvement in market share of the merged entity. Since the two airlines are operating in two different markets it is incorrect to add the present market share of the two airlines and show it as post merger total market share; the old argument of not adding apples and eggs apply in this case too. There is only a small segment in the international and domestic market that the two airlines compete against each other and in this case too merger through realignment of flight schedules is most likely to result in redistribution of market share and not to a net addition, from the point of the owner, redistribution of market share is immaterial as it does not bring any additional benefit. It is also important to remember that if Air India does not pick up passengers on the domestic segments of its flight then those seats are likely to remain vacant which would be to no ones benefit. For merger to be successful a marketing strategy will have to be worked out and it would also be necessary to put together a post merger perspective plan and a corporate plan. While the perspective plan would be in the nature of a ‘wish list’; the corporate plan would lay down steps to be taken to make these wishes come true. The two airlines should start working on these plans immediately after the decision to merge is approved by the government and not wait for the actual process of merger to be completed. This way the new enterprise would be ready with a plan of action from day one. Anyway, the most important thing is to bear in mind that merger will not automatically lead to an increase in market share.
2. Combined balance sheet: How the combined balance sheet of Air India and Indian Airlines would look like is an extremely important issue. The issue assumes importance in the light of the decision by both airlines to go in for IPO. Even if the airlines decide to float IPO prior to merger, the investors, particularly the large investors and institutional investors will necessarily carry out their own analysis of a combined balance sheet to arrive at their investment decision. Therefore a careful analysis not only of the individual balance sheet but that of the combined balance sheet should be undertaken and necessary steps taken to make the respective IPO attractive. From the point of view of the owner an analysis of combined balance sheet is necessary to establish whether merger would create shareholder value over and above that of the sum of the two companies. An incidental offshoot of combined balance sheet analysis would be that it would identify the efficiency gains likely to flow from merger.
3. People related issues: There are two kinds of people related issues that will arise as a result of merger. The first set will be with respect to personnel related like common cadre, combined seniority, pay and perks, transfer and postings, etc. The issue that bothers the employees, whether unionised or nor, most is what is in it for them, starting with basic questions: Do I still have a job? How are my work rules affected? The earlier these concerns are addressed the better is the chance for success of the merger.

The other set will be with respect to reconfiguration of business operations There will be many areas where both organisations would be having identical set up performing identical tasks, post merger it may not be necessary to maintain separate set up. In fact, much of post merger cost savings would come from this kind of reorganisation. In some cases this may require reassessment of staff requirement in which case a careful appraisal will have to be made whether or not the remaining personnel can be absorbed elsewhere in the organisation. A clear policy will have to be spelt out in this regard; it may also be advisable to take into confidence beforehand the staff of the two organisations. There are a number of studies that highlight the fact that mergers and acquisitions often fail completely or fail to meet expectations because people-related issues are not addressed. At all cost the temptation to adopt the easy way out of letting the existing organisational set up continue indefinitely should be avoided as it is sure to nullify all the potential benefits of merger.

1. Alliance Air and Air India Express: Much of Alliance Air’s problems can be associated with its lack of brand identity. At the time of its launch the concept of low cost airline had not gained currency nor was there any successful model to follow thus the main purpose of creation of the airline was to serve feeder routes. The airline shares practically everything with Indian Airlines and in public perception (aided to a great extent by the lack of any conscious efforts to develop a separate identity for Alliance Air) it is seen as an extension of Indian Airline. When low cost airlines finally arrived in India the crisis of identity continued and though the airline was in an ideal position to move into the slot of low cost airline no such effort was made as a result Alliance has continued to remain a burden for Indian Airlines. Merger would provide Alliance with a second opportunity and it would be best to merge its services with that of Air India Express and the new entity should operate as a subsidiary of the merged Air India-Indian Airlines.
2. Impact on competition: While the likely merger of Jet and Sahara has the potential to adversely affect consumer’s interest, no such possibility exists in the case of Air India-Indian Airlines merger. As stated earlier, the two airlines primarily operate in two different segments of the market and their merger will not result in curtailment of competition or creation of a monopoly monolith. Their combined financial strength and fleet composition would in all likelihood put them a little ahead of their competitors in the domestic sector but they will not acquire the status of dominant entity in the market and nor be in a position to dictate prices. On the contrary, post merger there is likely to be further addition to seat availability both in the domestic and international sector that would offer more options to the consumer. Overall, the impact of merger on competition is likely to be positive in this case.

The Man Who Knows He Would Be Prime Minister

Does it happen to you that all of a sudden without any warning an old, near forgotten incident comes back to your mind and you are forced to relive those moments all over again? From time to time this happens to me. It also happens with the Man Who Knows He Would Be Prime Minister. He himself told me this whereupon, and with tremendous effort, I gathered courage to ask him how it felt to know that he would be a Prime Minister. He said, ‘It is terrible’. But that did not tell anything because he said the same thing to any question that you asked. It was this that once made Susie (name changed) very angry with him. That day she had worked very hard and believed that she had really given him a brilliant shag, so when it was all over she asked how did he feel to which he replied, ‘Its terrible’. ‘I really wanted to box his ears’, Susie (name changed) confessed to me, ‘but women are so weak. If Monica could not give it to Bill, how could I’. Once when he was on a tour of the place that he had decided he would chose as his constituency someone asked him how he liked the place, ‘It is terrible’, he had replied. When I went back and told all this to his mother (not the real one) she spit on my face and said I was making a fuss of a non issue, his son says ‘It is terrific’ which people like me misinterpret.
One day I asked him when did he come to know that he would be Prime Minister, “since birth’, he said and then added, ‘It is terrible’. That day we were sitting under the huge banyan tree. All old colleges in our country has these banyan tree which with their gnarled and shrivelled aerial roots and cavernous trunks lent a majesty to the place which is otherwise surrounded by old dilapidated buildings, unkempt gardens and a general appearance of sloth and indifference. It was not very often that we sat under this banyan tree, only when he slept badly the previous night. His yoga guru had told him that if he spent at least three hours sitting under a banyan tree then he would never have insomnia. But there was a catch here. The catch was that he would also have to go through a period of abstinence for thirty days. ‘It is terrible’ he had commented. He is a very quiet person; if he was with you in a room with half a dozen other persons you were most likely to miss his presence. In fact one day he got very upset with Daphne (name changed) because she had paid the bill and left the restaurant even before he had finished eating. Later when I told this to Daphne (name changed) she said, ‘Oh, I see, that explains it. Up until now I had often wondered how could the bill be so much for a single person. Hmm, he must have been sitting opposite me and I forgot, or may be did not notice.’
He grew up the way children grow up in our country. His mother (the real one) left him in the care of his mother (not the real one). Except for brushing his teeth and washing himself he had people hanging around to do all other jobs for him. On the odd occasion when we had our lunch together in the college canteen he waited for me to put food in his mouth, move his jaws up and down thirty two times and then to make him gulp the food pinch his nostrils and close his mouth so he could not breath. The first time I had refused to feed him. As soon as I came out of the canteen four hefty men in safaris closed in on me, took me to a Jeep, drove me to an old forlorn building, put me into a dark room with no ventilation, made me undress, raped me by turns, hanged me upside down from the ceiling and dropped me in front of my house past midnight.
Although he had chosen his constituency while he was still quite young he was in no hurry to get elected. He let years roll by; elections go past letting others (including his mother, both real and not the real one) to become Prime Minister. He was in no hurry because he knew that he was going to be Prime Minister. How long this would have gone on one never knows but the family kept getting impatient, particularly during the periods they were not the Prime Minister, and finally told him that it was about time that he performed that task for which he had been sent to this world or at least took care of his own constituency. During election he sat quietly on the dais and made no speeches, nor did he try to strike a pose and look majestic. He just sat there and won the election. He could not become the Prime Minister; his mother (whether the real one or the not the real one it is not yet known) has wooed away some of his men.
Have those men in safari visited his mother; we will come to about it tomorrow.
    

It is early days

It is early days for Rahul Dravid and he may still prove me wrong. There has never been a born to be a cricket captain, captaincy actually grows on one, and it is a very slow constantly learning process. Among other things, one of the factors that signals the start the beginning of the end of a successful stint of a captain is the moment when the captains starts believing that he knows everything one needs to know about being a successful captain. This is when the captain starts strategising on preconceived ideas, stops thinking out of the box solutions, stops discussing cricket with his teammates and generally adopts a mechanical approach. If batting second in the previous game brought victory then it will jolly well be case in this match as well and so decide to field after winning the toss without bothering about the state of the wicket, about the weather, about own and rivals’ team composition and many other things that one does in such circumstances. Five bowlers under all circumstances? Yes, why not, that is how we have always structured our team. Even when the top and the lower order are struggling?

Dravid hasn’t reached that stage yet and that is why he may still prove me wrong; all the same I am pretty seriously worried about the defensive streak that Dravid has so strongly demonstrated in his captaincy so far. He is not willing to take a chance at a win unless he is absolutely certain that he will not lose the game. The very very late surge in Nagpur, the exceptionally slow batting on the third day at Mohali is just two recent examples. Even at Mumbai where the final Test is currently on, decision to field first and piking five bowlers just reflect Dravid’s defensive mindset. He seems to be so worried about the batting form of two of his batsmen that even before the match started he had decided that he wont take chance batting first and get out to a small total, better pick five bowlers and try to get the opposition out cheaply. In theory a good thinking, but field first at Wankehde? Were Sachin and other cricketers who know a thing or two about Wankehde not around to advise him? With India at 218/8 at tea on the third day, there is only one winner at this time.

It Happened a Long Time Ago

It happened a long time back, I was studying in the third or fourth grade, Pandit Nehru was visiting our city. It was not the first time he was doing this in fact Allahabad being his hometown he did this quite frequently. Our school was situated very close to Anand Bahawan, Nehru’s ancestral home. Built on an eight acre plot and based on the then contemporary British architecture it is an imposing building. Pt. Nehru would arrive by plane and alight at Bamrauli, the city’s civilian airport and from airport to his residence he will lead the cavalcade of cars standing atop a open jeep, waving at the crowd majestically and looking quite happy and pleased with himself. I never saw Indira accompany him during any of the journey; if she did she must have been sitting in some other car, in any case at that time nobody was interested in her, we were all busy in waving back to Nehru and desperately trying to make eye contact with him. There was a big reward waiting if one could make the eye contact, a beatific smile and a personalized wave of the hand. And whenever he spotted a Mother or a Teacher among us the waving switched over to a smart namaste. The Teachers would swoon and the Mothers would vainly try to preserve their stern and unsexy look. He charmed everybody, impressed quite a few and inspired some. His charm carried even after his death and Congress did not lose a single election (local, state and national) till well into the mid seventies. Although we had been told that Pt. Nehru loved children and that was why we were there to welcome him, his visits however, were a nightmare for us. Immediately after assembly we would be marched out of the school, classwise and hightwise and made to stand on either side of the road in front of the school. Nobody had any idea when he was due to arrive but our Mother Superior was not the one to take chances. So, there we were standing dutifully and minding our discipline very well to avoid the cane that was frequently spared. I don’t know why, but we did not carry water bottle to school (my daughter carried hers’ till she passed out of the school and joined college). We were not allowed to leave the class between the periods and during the periods as well. Thus, at the lunch recess there would be a big unruly crowd of about hundred to two hundred brats trying to gain access to half a dozen taps. Out on the street we of course had no water and worse, it appears that Pt. Nehru always chose the wrong period of the year to visit Allahabad, when the sun is at its fiercest. I am not able to recall any visit of Pt. Nehru during the winter months. My memory says it used to be month of August (or may be late July) when he use to visit us. August is the worst month; the raging temperature of June gives way to humidity, temperature ranging in the mid thirties and the sun beating down harshly on you. It was the weather, which did not cause sunstroke but sunburns. Within minutes we would all be feeling thirsty and dried up. No one complained, the few who were foolish enough to do so were promptly rewarded with a few of the best ones. The waiting would stretch into hours; sometimes well past the lunch break, in which case we were not allowed to break for lunch. While we stood there in the sun, constantly shifting weight from one leg to other to give them some rest by turns, shirts and vests wretchedly drenched in sweat, the teachers would move under the shade of the huge tamarind tree and the senior most monitor would be instructed to signal the teachers when Mother Superior was about to come out. Every now and then teachers in one and twos would go inside and (and I don’t know it was our jealous eyes or otherwise) look refreshed. The observant among us would notice tiny droplets of water hanging on loose strand of hairs. We would be talking among ourselves, first in whispers, which would gradually grow louder and when it got too loud a teacher or two would move out of the group and randomly spank a handful of students. From time to time shouts of ‘he has come, he has come’ would go up, much like ‘tiger, tiger’ in the fable. Finally he would arrive. We didn’t break ranks or crane our necks to have a glimpse; we stood quietly in a single file, waiting for the lead teacher to signal for us to shout ‘Chacha Nehru zindabad’. Though we were under instruction to shout at the top of our voice but by that time we would be too tired and exhausted for that. We would be desperate for the torture to end and get back to the school and quieten our thirst. I have never voted for Congress in any of the elections.

From No 2 to the Bottom of the Pit

From number two to number three; my stomach is feeling queasy. The only time Greg Chappell had been a coach he managed to take his team from number two spot to the bottom of the table. Is similar fate awaiting India as well? At the moment India has the most expensive coach in the world at her command, a person who was undoubtedly a great player in his days, also a person who is regarded by many as possessing a very sharp cricketing brain. So far we have not seen much of that famous cricketing mind in action, unless reverting to the tried and discarded strategy of sending a pinch hitter up the order is supposedly one. Or, insisting on taking three openers and then making two of them warm the benches right through the series! But that he has a sharp brain there can be no doubt about it. At a time when no country was interested in employing him as their coach and the Indian Board too seemed to be in two minds he clinched the deal by telling the Board he will get the World Cup for India in 2007. Through his natural intelligence he realised that the simplest way to obtain a contract would be to sell a dream, a dream that can only materialise at a distant future and in the event of the dream not coming true there will be nothing for him to lose because by then his contract in any case will be over. There has never been a shortage of suckers in this world; isn’t it? The Indian team is slipping, there is little doubt about it and much of the blame must lies with the coach. Take the case of Pathan, why has he lost his pace; more pertinently, did the coach not notice this and what has he done about it? At the pace that Pathan is now bowling he will be murdered even by ordinary batsmen and on all kinds of wickets. Then again take Lakshman and Tendulkar. Watching their dismissals during the Karachi Test made one feel that it was the not Lakshman or Tendulkar who were batting but their ghosts. They had a preoccupied, lost look and appeared to be playing under some kind of a mental pressure; what is it? Whose mischief is it? Instead of letting bygones be bygones and get on with the job Coach Greg Chappell is spending far too much time on a single agenda – how to keep Ganguly out of the team. For him the Ganguly affair is still a live issue. If that’s how he feels let that be so, but should it be at the expense of the Indian team? One must admit here that Ganguly, on the contrary, has shown more maturity in handling the situation. He has put all his energy into his game and the result is showing. His handling of Sohaib Akhtar in Karachi brought back the admiration of the cricket fans that he had lost.

Election Commission is active in West Bengal. It has to be seen if they succed in neutralising science from the art of electrol rigging. So far results have been onthe expected lines - large number of ghosts/bogus voters have been detected in the electro rolls. That was the contrubution of science. What about the art; will Election Commission be able to neutralise that also? The art form practiced are varied, but the most commonly applied is booth jamming; if would be interesting to see how EC can tame this menace. The ruling coalition has so far been more than quiet, they have even performed the politically correct task of welcoming EC's intervention. It is not difficult to understand the reason behind this reaction. Though corruption is wide spread in our society and almost everybody indulges in it in some degree, there is neverthelss a genuine hate against the system and therefore common man generally welcomes honest efforts to clean the system, be it by an institution or an individual. Protest against EC's efforts to restore the sanctity of the electrol rolls would not have gone down well with the voters, the ruling combine realises this too well, hence the silence. The other reason is that perhaps, for the first time ever the ruling combine has a very strong likelihood of winning the next election without actually subverting the system. In hic five years Budhhadeb Bhattacharya has succeeded in driving away the sense of hopelessness that had been pervading during the entire rule of his predecessor. By appearing to be doing something to liven up the moribund economy of the state Bhattacharya has created a feeling of optimism. It is an irony of electrol politics that an election is hardly won on the basis of actual performance. Election is won by the one who conjures up a dream of a 'sunhera kal'. It is promises that win votes not peformance. Bhattacharya's deeds in the past few years has created has fashioned feeling of promise for better tomorrow.

Returning after a long break Lot of thinga have heppened in the meanwhile. I have moved to a new office where the work is supposed to be both more challenging and exciting. So far nothing of that sort has happened, I will wait and watch for a little while. The weather has changed from autumn to winter, the winter monsoon is on, next to follow would be endless days of fog and icy winds. My daughter has been ill for the last two months; causing a great deal of anxity - will she lose another academic year, she has already lost two. The market is doing okay so my investents are giving good returns. Our three year old pet - a street dog whom we had adopted - passed away under mysterious circumstances. She was a gentle soul and very loving, she could follow simple commands like come, sit, stand, go, eat, no. However, the phrase that she loved to hear most was, 'Puchi is a good dog, every body loves Puchi'. Her loss affected us badly. We have brought a new pup home, a german shepard who is as naughty as a pup could be. He has not been keeping well for a week, occassionlly refusing to eat. We are very tense. As anticipated by me, Pakistan beat England, but mark my word India would be no push over. In fact, I would rate the outcome of the Test series 60:40 in India's favour. And lastly a new year has begun.