Tinker Tailor Soldier Smuggler

Over the years, I have doggedly insisted that our national flag carrier - DrukAir - is a vehicle on which few hundred business entities must ride - for business and prosperity. Because it is a public interest apparatus funded by Bhutanese public money, it must accept a responsibility that should transcend profit making. Whether pronounced or otherwise, the organization and its bosses cannot, in fact they must not, fail to recognize the social mandate that is intrinsic to its very being.

Sadly the carrier has failed the government and the Bhutanese people, miserably.

Yesterday morning a friend sent me some images of the vastly unfilled interior of the cabin of yesterday’s DrukAir flight KB153 - from Bangkok to Paro. Accompanying the images was the following partial passenger manifest of the flight, numbering a total of about 30:

Mix-And-Match: a Cabinet Member, a Professor, a failed business entrepreneur and three smugglers make up the passenger list of DrukAir

One does not have to be an Einstein to deduce that despite their insanely high fares, it is unlikely that the DrukAir is able to generate enough revenue to pay for their operating costs. Infact, we have seen that it has had exactly the opposite effect - it has succeeded in driving away thousands of potential passengers to competing airlines in the region - in the process driving the country’s tourism industry into the ground.

The thing with the national flag carrier’s irresponsibility is that the problem does not end or begin at their doorsteps - its ripple effect is felt across the broad spectrum of the business chain. It impacts Bhutan’s most vital industry - the tourism industry. When tourism is impacted, its effect is felt by the government: through reduced tax collection, and fall in foreign currency earning. Even beyond that, its impact is immediately felt by the hotel & restaurant industry, the handicrafts sector, transport industry, the farming community, pony drivers, roadside trinket sellers - even the wooden walkingstick fashioners at the base of Taktsang. As we all know, the tourism industry provides employment to the highest number of Bhutanese people, earns the highest foreign exchange and is among the very few net gain industries in the country.

To rub salt into the gangrene, the government’s recent tourism regulations that did away the requirement for tourists to come through local tour operators, has helped drive away a large segment of the tourism business into the waiting laps of the Jaigaon operators, with the net result that the Bhutanese operators are now no more than commission agents to the operators in Jaigaon. Bhutanese Tour Guides are reduced to lining up at the doorsteps of the Jaigaon operators - for business and employment. Or, they have been forced to take flight to destinations such as Australia or Canada.

Clearly those who are in positions of power and authority are being both negligent and irresponsible, that a single institution is allowed to inflict so much ruin and misery to others who have no choice but be at their mercy.

The question that begs to be asked is: If the Druk Air is not serving the national interest, whose interest is it serving? Is the organization being run and managed by a lot of do-gooders with misplaced allegiance? One has to begin to wonder!