Thank You Indigo!

 

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“It's safer being below the top 3. No pressure. Being in the top three is risky, thrilling, and fun, and you keep looking over your shoulders. It takes a beast to survive.”
― DON SANTO

“You know no nation has a monopoly on good things, each one has something that the others could well afford to adopt.”
― Will Rogers

 “It takes years of hard work to reach the top but it takes just one week to get to the bottom from the top.”

_ Me.

For a change diverting from my favourite subject or say subjects, no wildlife, no real estate yet the subject touches or is related to both of them & reason is present crisis (read a disaster or chaos) on the front of Indian aviation industry! I am sure as usual by now many theories, analysis will be put forward & at present unanimously the culprit has been declared as Indigo, a name which till last week was pride of nation & symbol of service as well punctuality! But then in the country which is ruled by emotions & right from sports (read as cricket) to politics to cinema everything is judged on the basis of emotions, can make No1 to zero in just one day, Indigo is also no exception. And then thanks to AI, you watch one reel of the flight travel crisis & your cell is flooded with every possible media related to the subject, so was mine about this Indigo thingy! And, I too was a victim or say nearly saved being one, as my flight from Nagpur was supposed to depart at 11.40 pm on my way back from marriage with my family but my cousin advised me to take the road which I did. And somehow reached Pune only to read the next day that the flight which I was supposed to board not only flew late but because of unavailability of a parking bay at Pune, it was diverted to Hyderabad & next whole day the passengers were stranded there! And by now there has been thousands of such cases where people not only have to abandon their travel plans but suffer money loss & more than that mental torture & agony which is more damaging & all because of one single air-line i.e. Indigo, is what most people will say, though I differ from this outcome or say judgement & that’s why this sharing! No, I am not an influencer or paid blogger to write to defend someone but I write because I am a civil engg, a businessman by myself & travel is part infrastructure which as I said related to my both fields, wildlife & real estate, that’s why I am sharing. And then this is a classic case of many aspects of a business which includes glory & shamming as well failure of policies by govt (that's a common factor)!

First & foremost, why people get angry or frustration levels went so high against the airline, it’s not just cancelation of flights or delays or missing the important events but it’s the surprise (read as shock) way which all these met to the travellers & the communication gap, which was the main cause of the anger. My sister was going to the airport at Nagpur & the flight which comes to Nagpur usually comes from Pune & fly back, & the incoming flight itself was delayed by 2 hours & that was not informed to my sister which is (read as was) normal practice with all airlines, especially by Indigo. While I knew the flight had yet to take off from Pune as one friend of mine was travelling on that flight, I kept on telling my sister about checking the delay & she was confident as no information had come on cell so the flight was on time & she was travelling with my eighty years mom. And when she reached the airport one hour before boarding, they told flight was delayed by two hours, this is what frustrates people as why you didn’t inform in advance when you know you can deliver in time, was the main reason for anger burst! Fortunately, that was just the start of the chaos & my sister & mom reached Pune with just two hours delay but from the next day (till now) the hell broke loose, which most of you must have read, watched repeatedly! So, Indigo is definitely responsible for poor communication as well as hiding the facts from their clients (read as passengers) as well why they took new bookings when they knew their flights are not on schedule or even not going to take off was another blame the company can’t dodge. These both things are very much important for every business house as right communication & false commitment must be avoided as that creates maximum dissatisfaction from the customers which damages company’s name as well entire industry’s name along!  For this Indigo is bound to pay in some way for sure, so be it.

Coming back to the main reason for chaos, is not Indigo defaulting on the guidelines of working hours of their flying staff, which is something they were doing since last two years but the worst (not even poor) infrastructure of public transport our country has, is my subject of sharing! This was not some natural disaster or terrorist attack or cyber-attack which not only made an airline (that too with its monopoly in the market) to ground its aeroplanes & make passengers suffer without any means to travel, this was man-made  chaos of no monitoring system to avoid it & no fall back arrangements when such disaster happens, is my subject of sharing. Agreed, Indigo made mess by violating flight safety norms, agreed, the concerned authority DGDF or anybody, agreed, other air companies hiked their fairs to sky high  but what about the infrastructure at airports & more than that, why people felt helpless that if one airline is unable to take them to their respective destination, no other means of transport was available to the commuters, this is real failure or reason of chaos for which every past & present govt of this country is responsible, is my reason of sharing!

And on top of it the way entire situation is being handled , for first four days no senior minister or officer of govt didn’t even acknowledged that there is any problem; & why, because most people who has stranded were from so called effluent class as flights were & is, still for upper classes, & they are not any political party’s vote-bank, is the main reason & I am saying this with full logic not just because I also come from that class! Indeed, when I was young, some three decades back air travel was for only the super-rich class but with the jobs (and education) being centralized at few metros or cities majority of the middle & higher middle class has settled in these locations & commuting by air travel has been a necessity for such class. As the govt can send free buses, trains for Chhat Puja or some religious event in some part of the country then why not it came forward & did the same here, just because the people are not your vote bank, right?  In fact, it's Indigo which made flying possible for the middle & higher middle class of our country & again I am making this statement with logic as before Indigo what our Govt has done with its own air travel company, ask this question to your own self! Today, even the opposition parties are hailing govt about monopoly of Indigo but it’s a business & a govt is not supposed to be a service provider but to play the role of service provider’s facilitator, which also it has failed to play that’s the reason Indigo could create monopoly & no shame or wrong in it! Like any service business air travel is also a business & customers will go to the company which they feel gives the best service, which Indigo was giving till last week is a fact! The govt failed to create parallel means of commuting making more & more people relying on air travel (read as Indigo) as look at the best example of Mumbai-Pune expressway. Before it came into existence there were daily four flights as railways timings as well within Mumbai or Pune commuting used to be a problem & distance is hardly 150 km between these two cities. The year Expressway came in function down the line in mere twenty years, today there is not a single flight operating on Mumbai Pune route now, what this indicates is if you give right alternative to commute people will take that & this is what our govt must take as a lesson from the Indigo chaos (hope)! Take another example of Pune Nagpur, when I came to this city four decades back there were three trains, six State Transport busses & that was enough as flight was out of our imagination but today every day nearly 30,000 plus people commute between these two cities which are 800 km apart & yes there is a Samruddhi Expressway for half distance but still no State Transport bus runs on it, there are only seven trains & on any given day of the year you don’t get ticket of railways at short interval on this route, making people to succumb to air travel i.e. Indigo! And because of this monopoly Indigo can afford to keep the most weird timing of its flight schedule such as morning 5 am from Pune to Nagpur. This directly hit even wildlife travels as what will the tourist do by reaching at such time to Nagpur as he reaches to destination like Tadoba or UKWS or Pench by 8 am & check in time is 2 pm, & add cost of commuting by private vehicle from Nagpur to these destinations making wildlife tourism more costly! Agreed, Indigo is not responsible for this but govt is, as just by building roads travel issues doesn’t get solved, we need a centralized road travel company the way USA has GreyHounds, they are fast, safe & they take directly to most destinations or nearby, saving time, money & lives, this is what I wanted to put forward! At the same time, we need more trains or efficient use of existing railway tracks, because after four days the railway minister declared that railway will provide more trains on some routes for stranded tourists but why can't you do this all along the year so people won’t be dependant only on some airline, is my question to the govt! And to the public, instead of voting by freebee schemes like Ladki Bahin, please vote for infrastructure & raise your voice for the right purpose than bashing helpless staff of some airline, as that only will solve your problem permanently (home)!

For me as icing on the top was editorial in Times of India where they compared the blatant violation of laws by Indigo with builders in real estate, seriously what kind of image real estate industry has got for itself, time for sole searching as reasons may be any but this is what media & masses thinks about us! And last but not least the basic problem is 150 plus crore population & if we don’t stop its speed of increasing then even the gods won’t be able to provide us enough infrastructure is something we are turning blind eye on! But till then, at least now take this Indigo chaos as an eye-opener or learning lesson or whatever you call & strengthen our road as well rail public transport system, which will not only save people’s money on air travel but will save lives also as on the roads every year nearly two lakh people die in the accidents & most of them are from small, private vehicles! So, thank you Indigo, for teaching such an important lesson in one stroke to an entire nation of 150 crore, though time only will tell whether we have learned the lesson or not till then, Baki Sab First-class Hai, Kasamse… (Plz google)!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

smd156812@gmail.com

Sanjeevani Dev.

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