Goodbye to the Maharaja: Air India sale signals less govt in commerce

The airline's privatisation is two decades late but Indian taxpayers ought to be relieved to have cut their losses.

Drop in at Air India Ltd.’s Mumbai office in early 2001, and you might have come across an elderly, white-jacketed man winding up the clock. With 17,400 employees and just 24 planes--three times the staffing level at major U.S. airlines--silly tasks like timekeeping in the headquarters had become someone’s job description.

Still, optimism was in the air back then. With India seeking to sell its national carrier, half a century of accumulated sloth was about to be shed. And yet, the privatization plan collapsed, and took 20 further years and billions of dollars of wasted capital to be reassembled again. Finally,