top of page

By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

AI’s Maharaja smiles joyfully

All 30 grounded aircrafts now fly Mumbai : Air India’s Maharaja is all pleased as punch at 80. After years of huge costs and efforts, the last of the grounded 30 aircraft – inherited by the Tata Group during the privatization in Jan. 2022 – is now resurrected fully and took to the skies gracefully on Monday.   The aircraft is the gleaming VT-ALL, a Boeing 777-300ER, that was gathering grime since February 2020, and becomes the final among the two-and-half dozen aircraft that have been revved...

AI’s Maharaja smiles joyfully

All 30 grounded aircrafts now fly Mumbai : Air India’s Maharaja is all pleased as punch at 80. After years of huge costs and efforts, the last of the grounded 30 aircraft – inherited by the Tata Group during the privatization in Jan. 2022 – is now resurrected fully and took to the skies gracefully on Monday.   The aircraft is the gleaming VT-ALL, a Boeing 777-300ER, that was gathering grime since February 2020, and becomes the final among the two-and-half dozen aircraft that have been revved up and revived in the past few years, AI official sources said.   It marked a symbolic milestone for Air India itself - founded in 1932 by the legendary Bharat Ratna J. R. R. Tata - which once ruled the roost and was India’s pride in the global skies.   Once renowned for its royal service with the iconic Maharaja welcoming fliers on board, in 1953 it was taken over by the government of India. After years of piling losses, ageing aircraft, decline in operations and standards – almost like a Maharaja turning a pauper - it returned to the Tata Group four years ago.   This time it was not just the aircraft, the brand and the deflated Maharaja coming into the large-hearted Tata Group stables, but a formidable challenge to ensure that the airline could regain its old glory and glitter. Of the total around 190 aircraft in its fleet were 30 – or 15 pc – that had been grounded and neglected for years.   At that time, the late Ratan N. Tata had directed that all these valuable aircraft must be revived as far as possible and join the fleet. Accordingly, the VT-ALL, languishing at Nagpur for nearly five years, was ‘hospitalized’ at the Air India Engineering Service Ltd., its MRO facility in May 2025.   New Avatar Then started a thorough, painstaking nose-to-tail restoration of an unprecedented scale, in which over 3000 critical components were replaced, over 4,000 maintenance tasks executed, besides key structural upgrades like the longeron modification, engines, auxiliary power units, avionics, hydraulics, landing gears and almost every vital system was rebuilt or replaced.   After the repairs, the old aircraft was reborn, under the gaze of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and technical assistance from Boeing, and the new ‘avatar’ jetliner emerged with the highest global safety standards.   The aircraft cleared all the rigorous checks, a successful test flight, earned the mandatory Airworthiness Review Certificate and then made its maiden commercial flight from Monday, March 16 – after a wait of six years.   Sturdy Fliers Created in 1946 to become an instant global icon, the Air India’s mascot Maharaja now sports a youthful and chic look, a welcome with folded hands, closed eyes, featuring a bejewelled turban, stylish jootis, and a textured kurta in Air India’s new colours. He is prominently visible at various touch-points in a flyer’s journey, such as First Class, exclusive lounges, and luxury products.   Today, he commands a mix fleet of around 190 narrow and wide-body Airbus and Boeing aircraft like : A319, A320, A320neo, A321, A321neo, A350-900 and B787-8, B787-9, B7770200LR, B-777-300ER. With the merger of Vistara and agreements signed for 10 A350 and 90 A320 aircraft, the Maharaja’s fleet is slated to soar to some 570 in the near future.

India Insulted

When Rahul Gandhi travels abroad, one can be certain of two things: he will avoid wishing Indians on their festivals, and he will revel in trashing his own country. His most recent stop at a Colombian university followed the same tired script. He told students there that the RSS-BJP ideology was rooted in cowardice, and that India’s institutions were under siege. His audience clapped politely. Back home, 140 crore Indians saw a politician gleefully dragging his nation through the mud on foreign soil.


This bashing India abroad has become the Congress scion’s trademark political style. The playbook is to denigrate India overseas, flatter himself as a truth-teller and the shining upholder of ‘secularist’ values - which usually means denigrating Hinduism to appease the Congress’ minority votebank - and bask in applause from left-liberal echo chambers. In Bogotá, as earlier in London and Washington, he repeated the hackneyed story of how Indian democracy is collapsing and its minorities are under threat. It is an old trick to seek validation abroad when none is forthcoming at home.


The BJP’s branding of Gandhi as “Leader of Propaganda” hits the mark. What Gandhi supplies to hostile lobbies abroad is not constructive criticism, but soundbites designed to weaken India’s global standing. He could have greeted his countrymen on Vijayadashami, a day marking the triumph of good over evil. Instead, he chose to play the villain, presenting India as a broken state to foreign audiences who neither know nor care about the country’s democratic vibrancy.


The irony is breathtaking. The Gandhi dynasty presided over some of India’s darkest chapters. If democracy ever faced real danger, it was under Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, when citizens were jailed, the press silenced, and the Constitution shredded. If institutions were weakened, it was under decades of Congress patronage politics, cronyism and dynastic arrogance. Yet Rahul Gandhi, the heir of that legacy, now postures as the defender of democracy.


The truth is more banal. Rahul Gandhi cannot stomach India’s rise. While the world hails India as a $4-trillion economy and a rising power, he sulks. While Narendra Modi is courted in Washington, Paris and Tokyo, he lectures in Bogotá about India’s supposed decay.


Even foreign voices are losing patience. Raymond Vickery, a former US official, advised Indian politicians to speak in favour of their country’s values overseas. Gandhi does the opposite. He feeds a narrative useful to India’s adversaries - that the country is unstable, undemocratic, and divided. He has become not Leader of the Opposition, but Leader of Opposing Bharat.


In his sojourns abroad, Gandhi offers a caricature: India as dictatorship, Indians as dupes and himself as saviour.


Posterity will not remember Rahul Gandhi as a constructive leader who did his bit for strengthening Indian democracy. It will remember a platinum-spooned dynast who, every time India surged ahead, went abroad to sneer at his motherland and get a few claps from foreign audiences.

Comments

bottom of page