Good Morning Friends,
Following are today’s Mains Marathon Questions.
About Mains Marathon – This is an initiative of ForumIAS to help/aid aspirants in their writing skills, which is crucial to conquering mains examination.
Every morning, we post 3 questions are based on current affairs. The questions framed are meaningful and relevant to the exam.
Write your answers in the comment box, given below.
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Questions
1) Do you think the recent privatization of Air India is good for all the stakeholders? Substantiate.
2) In order to enhance the prospects of social development, sound and adequate policies are needed to reduce inequality in India. Discuss.
3) Elaborate the steps taken by the Government of India to meet the challenges of Healthcare in India.
Thanks guys..
Please keep posting such questions, it is beneficial for analytical perspective towards newspaper articles
Yeah. The questions are indeed helpful.
Q1) Do you think the recent privatization of Air India is good for all the stakeholders? Substantiate.
Answer: Govt finally decided to go through with the privatisation of Air India by approving Tata Group’s Rs 18,000-crore bid. This marks the first major outright privatisation of a public sector company in almost two decades.
JRD Tata had laid the foundation of the air line in 1932 as Tata Airlines. It was nationalised in 1953 and renamed as Air India. With gradual opening of the aviation sector to private players in 1994-95, it started losing its market share.
The decision was taken due to following reasons:
– Huge amount of cumulative debt: Since its merger with Indian Airlines in 2007, Air India has been accumulating losses. Its equity value was pushed to the negative and govt had to spend a large sum of money to keep it alive. This was a clear wastage of public money on a loss making asset.
– Unfair competition to private airlines: Since it was subsidies so Air India could operate at loss. This hampered growth of a competitive and efficient aviation market in India.
– Impact of the pandemic: COVID was the last nail in the coffin. It dealt a death blow to the global air travel industry as severe travel restrictions were imposed by the countries.
Following factors led to the collapse of Air India:
– Mismanagement: Air India made a name for itself for trading away
valuable landing slots, and acquiring aircraft in excess of its
capacity.
– Absence of any strong aviation regulator also led to the collapse of Air India
Benefit of the privatisation move:
– it is a pragmatic move that will be immensely helpful for govt’s disinvestment programme over the long term.
– it will also lead to the saving of public money that can now be spent elsewhere towards much better objectives, like education, healthcare etc
– private sector can bring in the required efficiency that can revive the fledgling airlines in the coming years.
But, the move may have some negative implications too. For instance:
Rise in prices: As Govt will not subsidise Air India any further so it might lead to rise in ticket prices.
Rise of a monopoly: Complete lack of state control can also give rise to monopolies over time. This needs to be taken care of.
What is actually needed is a strong regulator which can keep an eye on any mismanagement, or attempts to establish monopolies in the aviation sector. Protection of consumer interests will also be best served by such an entity.
You have made a good effort in answering the question. Some suggestions to improve
1. Always stick to the core of the question that is asked, here the question is about impact on stakeholders, so address the impact of privatization on all stakeholders
Government: saving on daily expenditure of INR 20 Crore that was being expended etc. etc.
Public: Saving of tax payer’s money, can be spend on welfare etc.
Corporate Sector: Govt. owned majority of the debt which enabled TATA’s to actually buy, else debt levels were unsustainable for any pvt. corporate to buy the airline. Sector will benefit from improved competitiveness,
2. You can avoid unnecessary details like history of the airline. Mention such details only if absolutely essential to the essence of the question. Also avoid line like “COVID was last …coffin”. You’ll have to answer in 150-250 words, so choice of words becomes a crucial factor in quality of the answer. Your answer exceeds 400 words, this takes up extra time.
Keep writing 🙂