People who stand on the deck of their 300-foot private yachts basking in the Caribbean sun with a glass of champagne and surrounded by starlets and supermodels, should not go on strike. It just doesn’t seem right. An interesting photo of 2008 is Jet Airways owner Naresh Goyal nuzzling up to Vijay Mallya, who owns Kingfisher Airlines, after the two reached a business agreement. Mallya, so natural with his arms around Bollywood actresses during photo-ops, looks uncomfortable and stiff. He is smiling, but it is not the benign this-too-shall-pass smile of Goyal. This one is forced, as if he has been overtaken by circumstances. If that was forced, early this month, when he announced that private airlines would not fly for a day unless the Government bailed them out, he wasn’t even attempting a smile. Not even at the absurdity of someone like him—who, with so much perseverance across decades cultivated an image of being the king of good times—being part of a stop-work agitation.

When Mallya and his fellow heads of private airlines decided on the strike, the ghost of Karl Marx must have started scratching his head—now how do I fit this into Das Kapital? There is no dialectics for this. The rule is simple: capitalists exploit, workers strike. And when the reverse happens, its collapse is inevitable. The airline owners got it wrong right from the start.

For one, there was not one Malayali or Bengali among them and you just can’t go on strike without them. The comrades would have pointed out a few follies made by the strikers. They would have told Mallya that he could have expanded the agitation. His argument that because airline companies had private shareholders, in effect a government bailout would be a public service, could have got every listed company on BSE and NSE joining them. After all, every one of them has public shareholders and the Government would be bailing them all out when the need arises. But the airlines chose to only highlight their narrow wants.

The second thing the comrades would have told Vijay Mallya and Co is that even cartels must get the process right. An Indian Express report said that they forgot to send their demands to the Ministry of Civil Aviation. That’s just not done. And the last lesson for the rich strikers would have been that if you are bluffing, be sure to think it through. Keeping travel bookings open for the day they were supposed to be off air is not a way to be taken seriously.

Mumbai airport has turned into a turf war between taxis belonging to the Mumbai Taximen’s Union and private cab companies like Mega, Meru, Gold and She Cabs. The latter have been operating in the airport area for some time now, but are being shooed away with threats of violence. Their vehicles are not allowed to use the parking lot earmarked for cabs.
Private cabs are becoming increasingly popular in Mumbai because of their professionalism and better vehicles. The Union, on the other hand, has been consistently opposing the state government’s decision to allow private services. The trigger for the latest round of sparring was the introduction of the prepaid taxi service at the domestic airport. The traffic police has given safety assurances to private operators, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. Says Gavin Dabreo of Meru Cabs, “It should be left to customers to choose their mode of transport and private cabs must be given their space. The authorities must make exclusive parking zones available to private cabs...
We expect it will take some time for it to be sorted out.”

Former cricketer Vinod Kambli, having dusted off the controversy over his friendship with Sachin Tendulkar, is now gearing up for politics and has joined the relatively unknown Lok Bharati Party. Kambli is keen to contest the Assembly polls in Maharashtra later this year.

He has been flirting with politics for some time now. During the 2004 Assembly polls too, he had expressed a desire to be fielded as a candidate, but there were no takers among major political parties. In the intervening period from 2004, Kambli’s interaction with the public was through reality shows. Faced with a celebrity crunch, Lok Bharati founder, Kapil Patil, requested Kambli to sign up as a member of his newly formed political outfit. It was promptly done.

The move is welltimed with Assembly elections round the corner. “He is a celebrity and will be good for the party. There is a need for good people to join politics and Vinod Kambli is one of them. He is keen on contesting,” says Patil.

The land of milk, honey and excess —the United States of America—has increased the fuel efficiency in its motor vehicles by only three miles per gallon over the last 80 years. On estimates, at least 60 per cent of US cars and buses on the road are from the 1980s and hugely fuel inefficient. Clearly, America’s oil-related crises begin with its cars. New research by Michael Sivak and Omer Tsimhonia, of the University Of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, says that the US will have to completely overhaul its transportation system. That’s another way of saying the country has to invest massively in public transport. But equally, it has to pump money into research and development of the automobiles. The report points out that despite greater awareness and rising fuel prices, the average fuel efficiency of an American motor car is only 17 miles per gallon as of 2006. New models in Japan and Europe can deliver as many as 40 miles per gallon. Industry experts say that while research and development is crucial to solve the problem, replacing older cars is likely to take over a decade, a process that could prove vexed and expensive.

Manipur is burning again. This time, over the mysterious killing of a young man, who, the police say, was shot in an encounter. But the media coverage of the incident where the man is seen being dragged inside a shopping mall and then his body brought out, has triggered off mass protests. Life in the capital Imphal has been paralysed due to a strike called by Manipuri organisations to protest the killing.

Such incidents create further problems for the Centre, which is already struggling to bring Manipur to the folds of normalcy. The fact is that Manipur is a failed state, and ordinary Manipuris are torn apart by a spate of kidnappings, extortion and utter lack of development.

A recent report by the US-based Human Rights Watch describes the situation in Manipur as a ‘cycle of unpunished violence, including killings, by security forces and armed groups’.
It is high time that New Delhi intervenes to show that it cares for Manipur. The policemen should not be spared if an independent probe finds them guilty. Only then does India have the moral authority needed to reign over Manipur. Or the entire North-east, for that matter.

As far as ambitions go, PM Manmohan Singh’s target of generating 20 gigawatts of solar power in the country by 2020 would rank right on top. The National Solar Mission hopes the plan would help solve two problems in one go—cutting emissions and meeting the skyrocketing demand for power. Harnessing solar power remains a project on the drawing boards of most government bodies and private sector companies, but if all goes well, and an investment of a massive Rs 92,000 crore fructifies, the Government hopes it could significantly bring down the cost of producing a unit of solar power from Rs 15 currently.