Pity The Poor Drivers

Vir Sanghvi
Hindustan Times
If I were a driver, I would take a hockey stick and thrash as many airline pilots as I could get my hands on. Then, if I wasn’t too exhausted, I’d start on India’s politicians and give them a good thrashing too. If you’ve been following the saga of the Kerala MP Abdul Wahab and the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), then you will understand the context.
Abdul Wahab was supposed to board an Indian Airlines (now called Air India) flight at Kozhikode airport on Tuesday. He arrived at the aircraft late, escorted by the Indian Airlines manager. The aircraft’s pilot began shouting at the manager and complaining about the delay.
Why there was a delay is a matter of some controversy.
What happened next, however, is clear. Wahab told the pilot to stop shouting at the Indian Airlines manager and said that he was no more than a ‘glorified driver’.
This was enough to leave India’s pilots frothing at the mouth. Official protests have been lodged with the chairman of Air India/Indian Airlines. The pilots are now threatening to ban Wahab from all flights flown by members of the ICPA.
I have no idea why Wahab boarded late. Nor do I know why the pilot shouted at the hapless Indian Airlines manager. And there’s no doubt that Wahab should have been more restrained in his rhetoric. He had no business calling the pilot a ‘glorified driver’.
But here’s my question: what does it say about India’s pilots that they are so outraged at being compared to drivers, that they want to ban a passenger for daring to make the comparison?
It isn’t as though Wahab used an obscenity; it isn’t as though he questioned the pilot’s parentage; and it isn’t as though he called him an arrogant, overbearing idiot, who kept up the grand Indian tradition of pilots shouting at ground staff who dare not fight back for fear that the pilot will stalk out of the cockpit.
All he said was that the pilot was a driver. And perhaps mindful of the hours of training that go into the creation of a pilot, and the many lakhs that India’s pilots earn every month (packages of Rs 6 lakhs a month are not uncommon), he was careful to add the term ‘glorified’.
That the pilots should regard this as an abuse on par with a maa-behen ki gaali tells us something about their social snobbery. Clearly, they have contempt for humble, poorly-paid drivers who have neither their training nor their massive salaries.
If I was a driver, struggling against the chaotic traffic every day, coping with the vagaries of insensitive employers, and striving to educate my children, I would be enormously offended by the snobbery implicit in the pilots’ stand.
What, I would ask, is so contemptible about me that you treat any comparison to my job as grounds enough to ban a passenger?
I would say the same to Wahab. What did he mean? That the pilot shouldn’t complain about a flight delay because drivers have no rights, deserve to be kept waiting, and should never let sahab know how they feel?
Apr 12, 2008

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Categories: Air India Domestic Apr 2008, Airports Apr 2008, NACIL Apr 2008