The whole Indigo fiasco that’s going on right now at the cost of ordinary citizens’ time, money, and basic comfort is a pathetic example of corporate bullying of the government and an absolute disregard for the rules that were rolled out for passenger and employee safety. It’s not like these rules were brought in yesterday or a month before. These guys had close to two years to implement the rules by slowly streamlining the process. But they kept delaying it because they were confident that nothing would happen to them even if they show a blatant disregard for rules and authority. And now by putting thousands of citizens in trouble, they have achieved what they wanted all the while – rolling back (at least, temporarily) of the rules that they were happily evading, all with just a half-baked apology.

I do understand the tremendous inconvenience this causes citizens. But if the government and authorities bow down to this brazen bullying by an airline, which is in a position to bargain only due to the highly monopolistic status it enjoys in our aviation sector, they, and others, will continue this tomorrow. Are we always going to roll back rules and put safety second because corporates hold citizens hostage?

In the first place, the authorities should have been monitoring the streamlining of processes to adhere to the new rules with hard-and-fast time blocks and status checks, with proper penalties for non-adherence. Whether that was done or not, and why not, if they didn’t, I am unable to fathom. But now, when they have given enough justifiable reason for their political rivals to attack them on this account and they have nothing to lose, they should be making a proper plan to see this through instead of letting corporates like Indigo get away with this.

Yes, temporary roll-backs are unavoidable at this point considering the magnitude of this hit. But this cannot be reason for a permanent roll-back of the rules. Grow a spine, authorities, and stand up to corporate bullies.

Also published on Medium.