Ajit makes a pitch for AI to be privatised

Civil aviation minister Ajit Singh on Saturday said that cash-strapped national carrier Air India can be privatised if the “public, government and Parliament agree” on it. “If the public, Parliament and government agree, we can privatise it,” the minister said, adding that slowly, people are realising that the government must opt out from certain businesses. The minister also said there is a feeling that the “attitude of employees in government concerns is not tuned to customers’ needs”. On Kingfisher Airlines, which has now ceased to operate flights for the past several months, the minister said it would be difficult for any investor to bail out Kingfisher, but added that “anything can happen”. In an interview to a TV channel, the minister also initially said he did not think that the government would give all the money to Air India that they had promised in the airline’s turnaround plan but then quickly added that the government would eventually give whatever money had been committed to Air India by it. The minister indicated that if Air India expected more than that from the government, it would not be forthcoming. Mr Singh also indicated that whatever money could not be paid by the government to Air India this year would be paid next year. The civil aviation minister also said that even employees of Air India have realised that the airline needs to be competitive. Air India, incidentally, has launched an advertisement campaign involving corporate honchos to further boost its image. The national carrier has been incurring losses worth thousands of crores of rupees in the past few years following which the government had decided to bail it out by allocating about '30,000 crore over a period of about 10 years.