India Insight

India’s unfriendly skies

- Saritha Rai writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. -Not long ago, passengers of India’s airlines were spoiled with choices. One promised to treat them like a maharajah. Its passengers were greeted curbside by friendly staff who eagerly took their bags. Once aboard, glamorous female flight attendants waited on the passengers.Another offered meal choices from a list so long that it ran off the page, even on flights that lasted less than two hours. A third had fares so low that thousands of train passengers found it cheaper and faster to fly.”I always felt like royalty when I traveled, it was all so unreal and fantastic,” said Janaki Murali, a frequent flyer who works with one of India’s largest outsourcing firms based in Bangalore.Alas, it was also too good to last.Last week, a grouping of 10 private carriers –  including popular upstarts Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways –  threatened to stop operations for a day on Aug. 18 to draw attention to their sorry financial plight. A strike, they reasoned, would be a dramatic way to get the attention of the government.And with reason. Private airlines have been a key part of India’s economic boom: they ferry more than half of the country’s passengers.But the carriers are hurting, due to a combination of slower economic growth and government policies. State taxes make jet fuel 60 percent more expensive, one of the highest tax structures in the world. (The government uses the funds to subsidize the cost of others fuels such as kerosene and diesel for poorer Indians.)Private carriers have long lobbied the government to reduce these aviation fuel taxes, as well as high airport charges, so far to no avail.Vijay Mallya, the flamboyant owner of Kingfisher Airlines — which is named after Mallya’s beer brand — said India’s airlines were being “taxed to death.”For now, the crisis has been averted. A public outcry and a tough-talking government forced the private airlines to back off from their strike plan. The Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) said that the boycott was canceled “in view of the agitated public sentiment” and the government’s call for a dialogue.But some of the private airlines’ woes have been their own doing. During the aviation boom of the last few years, private airlines have proliferated.Many airlines, including Kingfisher and Jet Airways, have built up excess capacities, even as cut-throat competition and falling demand for air travel have eaten away their profits. The FIA said India’s airlines lost $2 billion during the last financial year.But even as private airlines demanded the government ease some of their financial burden, Delhi is considering handing a $3 billion bailout package to the national carrier, Air India.The bloated state-owned airline is a loss-maker crumpling under its own debt. Air India has 147 aircraft but about 47,000 employees – making it the most profligate employee to aircraft ratio in the world.Meanwhile, private airlines are also pushing the government to ease the current rules that ban foreign carriers from buying a stake in domestic airlines.For many, foreign investment appears the only hope for raising funds, a challenge at a time when the biggest global airlines are themselves cash-strapped.Clearly, the days of big orders for planes, new routes and lavish marketing budgets are over. Right now, India’s airlines are just fighting for survival.For passengers like Janaki Murali, who had quickly gotten used to the premium service and an abundance of flight choices, that is a hard landing indeed.More from Global Post:The Ugly IndianThe Mormons in IndiaCan you outsource God?

Can you outsource God?

– Saritha Rai writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

It is dawn in Kerala, a palm frond of a state in India’s South West. As the sun’s first rays hit the church steeple, a Holy Mass is being conducted in the local Malayalam language.

Only, the prayer is dedicated to a newborn by his Catholic family half a world away in the United States.

Requests for these so-called Mass Intentions, or prayers offered for a specific reason, pour into India from the United States, Canada and Europe, where there is a huge shortage of priests.

This outsourcing to faraway India is a quaint practice that has been called “religious outsourcing.”

But now, the severe global economic crisis and bankruptcies in Western churches are hitting even this unusual practice. In Kerala and other parts of India, where the Roman Catholic Church still thrives, outsourced mass intentions are dwindling and striking the income of poorer priests and impoverished churches.

Sebastian Adayanthrath, bishop of Kerala’s Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, one of the oldest in the country, said he is observing a big slowdown in incoming requests for mass intentions from the West.

The Mormons in India

– Sonya Fatah writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

Their voices rang out, echoing in the nearby passageway. “Count your many blessings,” they sang. “Name them one by one. Count your many blessings. See what God hath done.” And so, the women, some 25 of them, members of the Sisters Committee at one of the six churches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in New Delhi, closed their Sunday post-service meeting.

“Let us all work together so we can have a temple here,” urged the chair of the meeting, eliciting head nods and verbal assents all round.

There are almost 7,500 Mormons in India, according to the LDS Church, one of the most organized religious bodies in the world. Like all religious groups keen on increasing their numbers, the church is now looking eastward, toward India to share Joseph Smith’s message.

On numbers alone, conversion in India hasn’t happened as quickly as in Latin America, but that isn’t holding back the missionary fervor of those who have already embraced the church’s teachings. Ever since elders from the Quorum of the Twelve, while visiting Bangalore in 1992, announced a “prophecy” that New Delhi would have a temple, serious efforts are underway to get there.

Anuradha Yadav, 24, is one new Mormon who is dedicated to seeing a temple in New Delhi. Born into a traditional Hindu family of the Yadav caste, Anuradha recalls questioning her faith early on, when she was 14 years old.

“I kept asking questions, and I started visiting churches. In all I visited 30 churches.” One year of church shopping later, Anuradha was even more confused. Then in 2006 she bumped into two young elders on the street who shared the Book of Mormon with her.

The Ugly Indian

– Jason Overdorf writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

The instant that the fasten seat belts light went out aboard Cathay Pacific’s inaugural Delhi-Bangkok flight this summer, a chorus of metallic dongs erupted like a romper roomful of Ritalin-deprived 5-year-olds turned loose on an arsenal of xylophones.

The passengers were attacking their call buttons.

In seconds, flight attendants were up and running. By the time they began dishing out the special meals, tempers were beginning to fray.

“Whiskey!” demanded an old man with a white beard when the young Chinese flight attendant tried to put a meal in front of him.

“Sir, we are not serving drinks now,” the flight attendant replied politely. (Dong! Dong-dong! Do-Dong, dongdong!)

In the next row, another man, younger but no less eloquent, reached up to press his call button, and the flustered attendant caved and uncapped the Scotch.