Letter and spirit

Questions have periodically been raised about the “spirit of the merger” of Air India and Indian Airlines, but no one has actually defined it. At a conference to announce the change in pay scales in the merged entity, a journalist asked Ajit Singh whether the government was going against the spirit of the merger by cutting employees’ salaries. The civil aviation minister, only six months in the job and not part of the government when the merger was announced, was perplexed. What was the spirit of the merger, he asked the aviation secretary. Before the secretary could reply, the spirit of the question was dissolved.