OUT OF THE BLUE

On April 28, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the first flight of UDAN from Shimla, operated by Alliance Air. If the scheme works — and the government at least has put its best foot forward to make sure it does — it could add a new dimension to the aviation map of this country.

In the last couple of weeks, I met two people closely associated with the scheme: Jayant Sinha — who along with a couple of his senior officers — is the principal architect of the scheme, and Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director of SpiceJet, who has won some of the routes and plans to start flights from this June. Speaking to them I was able to better understand what the government is attempting to do and how it hopes to do it. Although I have so far been a skeptic — and have explained why in the same column — once Sinha explained the how, why, what, where and when of the scheme, it began to make more sense to me.

There is no denying that something like this would be great for the country at the macro level. Air connectivity has several downstream benefits for the local economy of the place connected. Airports become a hub of activity. Taxi drivers, sweepers and cleaners, shop assistants, parking attendants — there’s a whole range of services needed to run any airport and this results in plenty of new jobs being created.

I don’t expect affordability to be a problem. I’m sure all of us know people living in towns and cities like Kanpur, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Dharamshala, Manali and a host of other smaller towns who can afford a whole lot more than us salaried lot in bigger cities.

I also hope the scheme will ensure that as and when air services are provided, fares don’t hit absurd highs as they have tended to in the past to poorly connected places. I recall a former colleague of mine from Dharamshala always searching for somewhat reasonably priced air tickets. Fares from Delhi to Dharamshala and Kulu could go up as high as ~12,000 one way on certain days and times of the year. She used to joke that she could get to London and back at the same price.

There are two strong elements in my view that work in favour of the scheme. One, routes won are exclusive which means that players face no competition whatsoever on the route they are operating and second, lessors will be willing to lease aircraft at reasonable rates since deregistration has been made much simpler. A lessor is not paid and he can get back his aircraft in five days or so — at least on paper.

So what would be my biggest apprehension or the biggest roadblock I see to success? Simply this: many of the aviation players — be it smaller players or the czars — have proved to be no good at managing stuff. The record has been less than reassuring. Not just the smaller players but even big airlines like Kingfisher, Sahara and Air Deccan and even SpiceJet — rescued from the brink — have reached the fate they did largely due to mismanagement.

So if I were the aviation ministry, I’d gather some of the less leveraged and better managed corporate chiefs — and make a presentation to them on why it makes sense for them to consider getting into this business — even if they have no past experience. For many of them it may be a small side business to start with but one that can grow to a decent size in time. Market the scheme to them aggressively and you never know who might bite. A few credible players in the net and the scheme could well take off.

Of course the aim of the scheme as articulated in its title — Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik — sounds a bit absurd in India’s present circumstances. It requires a Herculean effort — eradication of poverty above all else. But even if the “aam nagrik” can’t fly as of now, there’s no reason why it can’t bring all the benefits of superior connectivity to many more cities in India. It can be a game changer over time.