How to spend Rs 46,000 crore

UDAN is a worthy initiative, but we still have Air India's enormous debt hanging around our neck

Perhaps the hardest part of analysing the Modi government’s many schemes is getting beyond the absurdity of their names. UDAN, for example, the perfectly reasonable name for the new air connectivity scheme inaugurated by the Prime Minister this week, is actually an acronym for Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik—a phrase that I will not translate, in order to preserve the happy innocence of non-Hindi speakers.

That said, it is an interestingly designed scheme. The original idea, as it emerged from the Prime Minister’s Office, appeared to have an unworkable price cap and little more. After some months of work from the