Indians are used to brazen displays of arrogance, high handedness and sense of entitlement of their politicians. But Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad jolted even cynical citizens with his shocking behavior today. First, he assaulted a 60 year old Air India staffer because the honorable(sic) MP thought his lordship had been insulted. It didn't end there. When asked later by media persons about the "alleged" assault, Gaikwad brazenly made it clear that there is nothing alleged about the criminal offense. He publicly boasted that he used his sandals to beat up the Air India staffer about 25 times. He went further and proclaimed truculently that he is a Shiv Sena and not a BJP MP. God knows what he meant by that. Thus Gaikwad was part of a group of Shiv Sena MPs who were accused of assaulting a Muslim employee of a catering service of Maharashtra Bhavan in Delhi and force feeding him during Ramzaan.
The debate and outrage over this criminal behavior will go on till we get another topic to outrage on. Some star journalists who were praising Shiv Sena till recently (naturally because it was abusing Narendra Modi!) are suddenly realizing once again that Shiv Sena is not full of angels after all. In contemporary India, you can be guaranteed to attain star status and the boy (or) Girl Scout badge of heroism if you figure out new ways to abuse Modi and conjure up new adjectives that will make him appear worse than Atilla The Hun (Hitler has been used too many times already!).
And yet, looking at objectively at the thuggish behavior of the Shiv Sena MP, you have to agree that Modi does share some blame for this outrage. For all his talk of a New India, Modi has not done enough to dismantle the superstructure of patronage and plunder that the public sector has become for Indian politicians and bureaucrats. By any economic or business yardstick, Air India is a lost case and a lost cause. It survives only because the Modi regime is using tax payers money to keep bailing out the carrier. Remember the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign when Modi kept saying that it is not the business of the government to be in business? What happened to all that?
There is little doubt that extremely competent and efficient ministers have ensured a remarkable improvement in the performance of many public sector companies. The most visible example is Piyush Goyal under whom perennially loss making Coal India has staged a remarkable turnaround. Full marks to Modi and his ministers for that. But they won't be around forever. Coal India is a company which is notorious for allegations that top officials pay crores in bribes to politicians for coveted posts. Rest assured Coal India will once again become as bad if not worse than Air India when a more "malleable" minister takes over the ministry.
You cannot claim to be transformative if you take no steps to dismantle a system that inherently encourages patronage and plunder by politicians and bureaucrats. Isn't it time Modi paid more serious attention to his campaign promises? Otherwise, entitled and thuggish politicians like Gaikwad will keep treating public sector companies like Air India as their personal fiefdoms.
