Air India Strike: Situation Worsens

Despite the hard attitude adopted by Delhi High Court against the pilots' strike in Air India and the direction given by it to the pilots to resume duty, the dispute continues to defy a solution. The situation has come to such a head that despite the threat of losing their jobs and contempt of court proceedings, pilots appear to be adamant to hold on to their stand. The Air India administration has hinted a lock out in the organization.
Sixth Pay Commission Recommendations
It may be pertinent to note that while hearing the case pertaining to the strike in Air India by its pilots, the court had directed the pilots to return to their duties in public interest. Pilots are demanding the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations. Interestingly, pilots had served notice of strike on the administration way back on 24 February, but the Air India administration failed to find out an amicable solution to the issue. Several rounds of talks between the parties concerned also proved futile and in the end, pilots went on strike. Air passengers are a harassed lot because of the strike by about eight hundred pilots.
Seeking to derive undue benefit out of the Air India strike, private airlines have unilaterally hiked their fare manifold. On the other hand, the Air India administration declared the strike illegal and, thereby, further provoked the pilots. It also withdrew recognition granted to the Indian Commercial Pilots Association, which played an important role in the strike.
As a matter of fact, the adamancy of pilots coupled with the weak stand and attitude of the Air India administration, and the dictatorial attitude of the chief managing director of Air India Arvind Yadav, are largely responsible for the situation. That is why when the case came up for hearing in Delhi High Court, the court directed the pilots to return to their duties immediately and also admonished the administration for its failure to implement the agreement it had reached with the pilots in 2009.
Demands of Employees
The fact remains that the Air India administration or the government have never displayed any liberal attitude to the just demands of employees, nor it showed any courage to hold on to its decision despite its harsh attitude which was displayed initially when the strike began. It remains a fact that whenever there was a strike in the Air India, the administration took strong measures to dismiss the striking pilots, but it never implemented its own decision. It was compelled to withdraw the decision of dismissal of pilots following the discussions and talks with the striking pilots. That is why pilots are adamant despite dismissal of some of their colleagues and the threat of contempt of court proceedings looming large on them. Without caring for any punitive action pilots are continuing their strike for which none other but the very attitude of the Air India is responsible.
Had the administration implemented the 2009 Agreement, there would have been no strike, nor it would have to bear the admonishment by the high court. It is the outcome of the irresponsible attitude of the administration that pilots have mustered such great courage that they are not prepared to hear to anything from the administration, and are defying court direction too. By ignoring the larger public interest, pilots in their own vested interest, are causing a loss of millions of rupees to the government and the country and simultaneously, adding to the sufferings of air passengers.
Resolution to Issue
Under the circumstances, the reported intention of the Air India management to declare a partial lock out does not augur well. It would be futile to expect any fruitful outcome of it. In fact, it may further deteriorate the situation. If the government does want to take a decision, it should decide to remove the present CMD Arvind Jadhav who continues to be in the eye of the storm because of his way of functioning. At present, going by the stage of the strike one can only surmise that instead of a resolution to the issue, the situation is worsening with each passing day.

Union Budget 2011-12

The Union Budget for 2011-12 was presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Parliament on 28 February. The Budget can only be termed simple and tasteless. As was expected, it has not made any complex and tall promise.

Tax Exemption limit
Otherwise also, no great expectation and anything significant was expected from the budget. Such expectations are made usually when a new government comes to power in an election year. Of course, there were some demands. It was, for instance, demanded that the tax exemption limit should be increased to Rs.300,000 from the present Rs.160,000. The demand was made in view of the high price rise and the galloping inflation following the recommendations made by the Sixth Pay Commission. The sky rocketing price rise had diluted the monetary gains of the employees. In short, the increased pay packet got sacrificed at the altar of price rise.

The finance minister, however, paid scant attention to the demand. He only raised the exemption limit by a mere Rs.20,000 to the level of Rs.180,000. Yet employees who have no other source of income but salary may heave a sigh of relief? They would not be required to file the Income Tax return from the next fiscal year.

Separate Allocation of Rupees
Pranab Mukherjee has at least taken care of the Anganwari workers and helpers who indeed would be jubilant. The finance minister has doubted their monthly wages from the current Rs.1,500 to Rs.3,000 in the case of the Anganwari workers and from Rs.750 to Rs.1,500 per month for their helpers.

The increase in their wages indicates that the government has included the rural areas in the sphere of its priorities and does not remain confined to urban areas. This thinking gets further strengthen by the initiative that the loan amount for farmers has been increased to Rs. 4.75 trillion from the current Rs. 3.75 trillion. Similarly, the fund under the 'Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana' (National Agriculture Development Scheme) has been increased to Rs.78.6 billion from the current Rs.67.55 billion. There is a separate allocation of rupees three billion to encourage production of pulses.

Positive and Salutary Impact
The measures would certainly have positive and salutary impact on farmers. But, since our country is basically agrarian and largely dependent on agriculture, there was need to pay more attention to this aspect. There was, for example, the need to allocate funds for improvement of irrigation system and to deal with drought. In our country, drought is taken as a natural calamity and dealt in that way only, but drought has, in a way, become perennial with agriculture.

The other sector for which the people had great expectation was that of education. The budget 2011-12 proposes to incur an expenditure of Rs.520 billion on it. Apparently, the allocation appears to be a huge one, but it is too early to say anything with confidence whether we would succeed in implementing the Right To Education Act and derive reasonable benefit out of it. If one discusses education with regard to the minorities, the budget has an allocation of Rs.500 million for the setting up of (two) centers of Aligarh Muslim University at Murshidabad (West Bengal) and Mallapuram (Kerala). Undoubtedly, the measures would be welcomed.

Assessment
In short, the budget 2011-12 has attempted to please all by giving something to everyone and the budget presented by Pranab Mukherjee can be termed balanced to some extent. Yet, since he had commenced his speech by referring to price rise of essential commodities and the inflation and had expressed concern about it, he failed to come out with any concrete measure to address the situation. When he identified the reasons for the backbreaking price-rise and inflation, he should also have shown the way how these malaises could be addressed.