In any market mutilated into a duopoly or distorted into a monopoly, the consumer ceases to be a sovereign participant and is instead reduced to a supplicant – stripped of agency, dignity, and choice, compelled to accept whatever crumbs the corporate colossi condescend to toss. The illusion of free choice evaporates the moment two dominant players begin dictating the terms of national mobility.
Monopolistic might thrives not on efficiency but on engineered insufficiency. It manufactures scarcity with meticulous calculation, inflates fares with merciless consistency, and treats society’s needs as expendable footnotes to balance sheets.
Adam Smith cautioned that people of the same trade seldom meet without conspiring against the public. Today, this once-philosophical warning has hardened into a structural certainty. Chomsky’s indictment of capitalism’s autocratic instincts, Lenin’s denunciation of capitalist democracy as a privilege for the rich, and Brandeis’s unflinching declaration that democracy cannot coexist with concentrated wealth now read not as ideological provocations, but as empirical observations of contemporary lived reality.
Corporate concentration corrodes democracy. When private dominance diminishes public authority, the State begins to shrink before the shadow of the very forces it should regulate.
This corrosion became catastrophically visible in India’s civil aviation sector last week, where a single airline’s collapse of operational integrity plunged the nation into confusion, chaos, and contemptible exploitation. IndiGo, holding an astonishing 63 per cent of the domestic market, allowed its operations to disintegrate with breathtaking negligence.
More than 2,000 flights were cancelled in just three days and over a million passengers were stranded all over the country – weddings wrecked, dignitaries disoriented, and families flung into logistical limbo. Airports devolved into arenas of exhaustion and exasperation.
Yet as the nation fumed, the Government flinched. Instead of confronting this insolent titan, it capitulated with bewildering speed. It withdrew its own safety-driven directive issued 18 months ago on pilot rest rules. What should have been a moment of regulatory resolve became an act of political retreat, signalling that the mightiest state has surrendered to airlines’ authority and arrogance.
The human consequences were not merely inconvenient. They were harrowing. The Singapore High Commissioner could not attend a staffer’s wedding. A newly married couple, marooned by cancellations, attended their own reception virtually.
And what did the airlines offer? Excuses draped in corporate jargon. IndiGo blamed technical turbulence, meteorological misfortune, airport congestion, and the new flight duty time limitations (FDTL). Yet, these fatigue-mitigation rules were not sprung overnight. They were telegraphed months in advance. Airlines had time to recruit, retrain, re-roster, and rebuild resilience. They did none of it. They bet on bending the State to their will and won.
The Civil Aviation Minister’s reaction only magnified the malaise. As national outrage crescendoed, he remained conspicuously cloistered in bureaucratic inertia. Only once Parliament erupted did he emerge, offering mild admonitions, sterile meetings, and symbolic supervision. The Government’s eventual rollback of its own pilot-rest regulations was an unmistakable admission of impotence and an extraordinary concession to corporate coercion.
Meanwhile, Air India – celebrated as reborn under Tata stewardship – exposed its own antiquated underbelly. Laden with legacy lethargy, ageing aircraft, and internal alignments that prioritised mergers over passengers, it too cancelled flights in droves.
Structural starvation
Expectedly, the Opposition pounced upon the opportunity and raised uncomfortable questions. It blamed the BJP Government for encouraging monopolisation of the sector, soft peddled on defiance by the airlines, allowed them to fleece passengers by charging hefty prices even during the crises created by them, and did not bother about the stranded travellers.
However, this crisis cannot be divorced from the broader structural starvation of India’s aviation capacity. A nation of 1.4 billion people operates with barely half a dozen meaningful scheduled carriers. Of the 839 registered aircraft, only 680 are operational. IndiGo owns more than half of them. On the other hand, domestic passenger traffic has surged from 140 million in 2019 to an estimated 400 million in 2025.
While demand has ascended meteorically, supply has ascended minimally. Massive fleet orders – from IndiGo’s 500 Airbus aircraft to Air India’s 470 Boeing and Airbus jets – are caught in global bottlenecks of engine recalls, manufacturing delays, labour unrest, and quality-control crises. India produces barely half the pilots it needs annually, guaranteeing chronic crew shortages even before the FDTL rules tightened.
Inevitably, an under-supplied, under-regulated environment becomes a playground for predatory pricing. The price pyrotechnics were astonishing even by Indian aviation’s chequered history. Delhi-Mumbai economy tickets leapt to Rs 36,000-56,000 – higher than some fares to London. Delhi-Bengaluru touched Rs 70,000. Delhi-Kolkata round trips breached `85,000 – more expensive than Europe.
Families that once dared to dream of air travel found those dreams desecrated by a cartelised market masquerading as capitalism. And why would airlines restrain themselves? With Jet Airways extinguished and Go First gutted, courtesy of Government inertia and regulatory impotence, competition collapsed. The skies consolidated into a semi-duopoly, and duopolies do not compete – they collude, corner, and crush.
Regulator in name
Hovering feebly above this collapsing edifice is the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, a regulator in name but not even symbolic authority. It issues advisories that airlines contemptuously discard. Passengers suffer cancellations without recompense, fares surge without scrutiny, and refunds without punctuality. Airlines act with impunity because the regulator offers immunity. The human toll of this regulatory collapse wasn’t an incidental inconvenience. It was a national indictment. The stranded passenger wasn’t a statistic. It was a grief of a student deprived of an exam, a worker deprived of wages, a patient deprived of treatment, a parent deprived of presence.
Meanwhile, airport staff – underpaid, overworked, and utterly unsupported – became the unwilling shock absorbers of public fury.
India cannot continue down this perilous path. Civil aviation has transformed from a luxury into a lifeline of economic activity, social mobility, and national integration. To treat it as a casual commercial sector rather than essential infrastructure is to invite recurring catastrophe. It must establish an autonomous aviation authority endowed with investigative autonomy, financial independence, and punitive teeth.
Aviation must be legally recognised as an essential service, insulating it from arbitrary disruptions and compelling continuity of operations. Fleet expansion must be accelerated through targeted incentives. Pilot training must be expanded through public-private partnerships, modernised curriculums, and accelerated licensing pipelines. Fare gouging must be criminally prosecutable, not politely discouraged. Competition must be resurrected through the revival of dormant carriers, the entry of new players, and the dismantling of the suffocating duopolistic stranglehold that now defines the Indian sky.
Most critically, the state must reclaim its moral and regulatory authority. A nation of 1.4 billion citizens cannot be held hostage by two private entities that have mastered the art of extracting profit from paralysis. The Indian sky must not become a symbol of surrender to corporate power. If the State continues to capitulate, India’s dream of accessible, equitable aviation will disintegrate into an illusion. The moment for half-measures has passed. The nation must act with clarity, courage, and conviction – or watch its aspirations grounded by the very forces meant to carry them forward.
