HEIGHT OF CORRUPTION

-- By G Manjusainath

Travelling in an aeroplane has always fascinated me. Besides curiosity, it used to tickle me with a sense of pride that a ‘grassroot level’man like me has also joined the elite. However, it would take a little time for my smugness to crash midair when I would get jetlagged and become airsick.

But the latest sojourn from Bangalore to Goa sent shivers down my spine. All my child-like curiosity, sense of pride and tickling evaporated the moment I reached the airport. The plastic smile of air ‘hosts’ (too bad, there were no airhostesses) could not cheer me up. From the moment I tied the seat belt till the time our plane landed safely, I had Hanuman Chalisa on my lips.

Reason: I had no idea whether the men in the cockpit were genuine or fake pilots. I wished I could rush into the cockpit, seek their pilot licences and ask them whether they were among those on the radar of the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Our sixty years of corrupt independence has made us very experimental. ‘Where’s the need to take the risk when a rotten apple spoils the barrel? Fill the barrel with all rotten apples’-- seems to be the attitude these days. Of the 10,000 pilots, we have 2,000 pilots on the DGCA’s radar with suspected fake licences. Who knows how many more are in store?

An experimental lady pilot never believed in treading on battered path. “Why the rear wheels of the plane should first touch the ground while landing?” was her grouse. So she used to first touch the nose wheels of the plane on the ground with a thud sending the passengers into a tizzy. But there were air-hostesses with a compelling smile to tell the frightened passengers: ‘All Is Well’.

Another experimental pilot dared taking a small nap well before landing on a table top runway at Bajpe airport in Mangalore. That experiment did not go well as it killed 158 people last year.
Corruption is surely our way of life but now it has literally touched the pinnacle. You should not be surprised to find a spoilt Pappu of your neighbourhood inside the cockpit with a sparkling white uniform.

You don’t know how much bribe these fake pilots would have paid to get a licence, how much they would pay further and stay back as pilots. There is every possibility that we will have two categories of pilots- Luxury class and economy class. Luxury class pilots for the Orwellian ‘more equals’ and the rests for Shashi Tharoor’s cattle class.