What A Scam, 'DR'!

Dear Vijay Mallya,

Hope you are having fun in London. We read the media statement you released on the night of March 6 (we know, you are at your creative best at night) with lots of interest. So, first things first—your opening remarks about not wanting to spoil a sensational story with the truth must rank as the most creative we have come across from a businessman of your standing. We must inform you that we also never let truth come in the way of us referring to you as “Dr”.

We have been waiting to hear from you for a long time. You had assumed a zen-like silence and so we took our little tales of woes to neighbourhood newspapers kind enough to put across our viewpoint to their readers. Of course, you des­cribe the stories about the lives we lead as “sensational”—but more of that later.

Yes, Kingfisher turned out to be, like you said, an “extre­mely unfortunate commercial failure caused by macro-economic factors and then government policies”. That you chose to launch an airline even after knowing the rules of the game must be seen as a very brave effort. You possibly missed the Shaurya Chakra by a whisker. You mentioned how SBI Capital Markets went through the project report and only when they gave a go-ahead did you launch the airline. But SBI Caps is just like a normal bank that serves up housing loans to people like us. They are as liable when a property vetted by them starts developing cracks and leaking from the roof.

Metaphorically, that is what happened to your airline right? It started leaking from everywhere. It became so bad at one time that you decided in your infin­ite wisdom that the best way to fix the problem was to buy another airline that was leaking equally, if not more. But then, your intention to buy another airline was based on the fact that it was eligible to fly international routes, which your airline couldn’t as it had not come of age yet, as per the regulator’s norms. How very clever.

So, you took on international players such as Emirates and British Airways on their own turf. After all, you have always lived life king-size. All along this journey, you were helped by the magnanimity of the banks. Or should we put it down to your charm? As an airline doesn’t have much of physical assets, the banks were willing to take its equ­ity shares as collateral to lend you money. Normally, when a bank takes equity shares as collateral, they are valued at a discount, but the lenders were so charmed by your persona that they were willing to bend rules, to stay charmed.

Within a year, you realised your wisdom couldn’t match the deep pockets of some overseas players and hence you were forced to stop international operations. Smart move! Then comes the small issue of returning money to your lenders and not paying salaries to your staff of about 4,000? The staff strength is now down to less than half of that. You were again smart enough not to make a mention about your employees in your statement, just as you did not mention to the tax and PF authorities the money you had deducted from our salaries to deposit with them.

We were served notices by the tax guys for our failure to pay TDS. We were bewildered but then realised that when you haven’t paid back around Rs 7,000 crore, this is small change. Most of us are greying rapidly, no one wants to give us jobs. Some of us had to let our children drop out of schools. Divorce cases are on the rise and a few have tried to commit suicide. But that’s just fine. Yes, our children can’t celebrate their birthdays any longer but that too is fine, isn’t it? After all, when our boss gets to celebrate his birthday by getting Enrique Iglesias to sing happy birthday for him, we shouldn’t be complaining.

You point fingers to the fact that those with higher debts have been let off and you have been made the poster boy of all bank NPAs. Don’t worry—we have been assured by the government that your wish will be fulfilled. You say you have always lived an honourable life. We aren’t disputing that. Please let your employees and vendors, too, lead honourable lives.

Enough said about your airline. It is dead now and in our country we don’t talk ill of the dead.

Hope to see you soon.

A Kingfisher Insider

Slide Show

“Exploitation is in your blood, that’s why you are talking of one-time settlement with banks but not  employees,” wrote women airline employees in an ‘open letter’ to the king of not-so-good times.