A question of disorder Choose simple over grand
With reference to Somasekhar Sundaresan’s column, “A chance to score a judicial point” (May 25), the Justice C S Karnan saga appears to be more a disorder within the judiciary than a judge’s accountability to Parliament or the public at large. Before invoking constitutional provisions of checks and balances, we need to ponder over the following.
First, a judge once appointed can only be impeached. There are no interventions designed in our system between appointment and impeachment. We need to recognise that judges, like any human being, can behave irrationally when it is about their dignity. The judiciary needs to devise a human resources policy having less severe interventions than impeachment.
Parliament has a provision to expel a member from the house for misbehaviour. Similarly, public servants under the executive arm of the state can be suspended from duty so that they can’t use official powers to their advantage. Why can’t there be an in-house mechanism in the judiciary to prevent a judge from passing orders over his fellow judges and the judges of the Supreme Court?
We need to differentiate between institutional checks and balances, and individuals erring within an institution. Parliament should intervene only when a malaise is affecting the judiciary as an institution.
Amit Kumar Upadhyay New Delhi
As Justice Karnan is himself playing the Dalit card, it will take a lot of effort from politicians to call his “bluff”, and they might end up annoying Dalit voters.
The situation is tricky, but it is a golden opportunity to set things straight.
Bal Govind Noida Shyamal Mazumdar’s piece, “Air India’s flight to nowhere” (May 25), strikes the right note. That Air India has seen too many “robust” plans is beyond doubt. Such plans will not produce any result, only increase the debt of ~46,000 crore. No one is being held accountable for the huge debt at Air India going bad.
Air India does not need plans; it requires some basic things. First, the Air India website should be designed in such a way that it offers the cheapest fare on every route. This would ensure 100 per cent occupancy. Every time I have tried to buy a ticket, Air India shows the highest fare. What kind of pricing policy is this?
After Air India has restructured its fares to show the cheapest ticket price by at least ~50, it should get into monetisation mode on its plots and real estate. Of course, a debt of ~46,000 crore cannot be repaid only through real estate, but at least some of the burden would be shed.
The other step is co-branding with some private airlines so that when they are fully booked/occupied, they can sell Air India seats at a predetermined price.
Of course, politicians tend to prefer the grandiose to the simple. They go for steps that do not produce any result but entail a huge capital outlay.
Deba Pratim Ghatak
Correction
Durgapur The report, “Air India’s flight to nowhere” (May 25) quoted a FlightStats study, which ranked Air India the third-worst airline in the world in terms of on-time performance. Air India has cited a communication by Flightstats on January 10, 2017, which said that it does not endorse the portrayal of the airline’s performance by Bloomberg in an article.
The error is regretted.