Neither has the market value of the airline been stated, and nor have assets such as landing slots and bilateral rights been valued.A book value in a sense represents a historical cost, or the purchase cost adjusted for depreciation while market value is the true value of the enterprise that can be realised in the open market. It was none other than our national carrier that spring brake actuator manufacturers went into the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan not once but thrice to evacuate Indians in distress who could not leave due to the lockdown in the city.Air India is going under the hammer for the second time in two years. And it is these slots that have not been appropriately valued in the Preliminary Information Memorandum to hoodwink the public into believing that the airline is worthless. Concealing the market value from the Indian public, however, is the best way to sell the airline off for a pittance, in return for favours from a crony capitalist. This disinvestment also assumes significance given that the government has fallen short of its ambitious disinvestment target of Rs 1.
This is exactly what the Preliminary Information Memorandum does. Air India Limited is the owner of prime real estate in urban Indian centres including the iconic Nariman Point office in Mumbai which alone is valued at around a couple of thousand crores.Manish TewariManish Tewari is a lawyer and a former Union minister. Not only has Air India helped Indians in need, time and again, from the Kuwait evacuations in 1990 to the Yemen evacuations of 2015, but Air India has been instrumental in servicing India’s strategic and humanitarian requirements both domestically and globally. Selling the airline requires a larger national consensus along with greater transparency. While real estate assets are more easily quantifiable, it is the other tangible assets that need to be properly valued before a sell off. And while the citizenry is in the dark about Air India’s true value, the government wants to sell India’s flagship carrier for a paltry sum of some Rs 20,000 crores.The government wants to portray an image of worthlessness, despite Air India possessing prime assets that are worth at least `5 lakh crores.The book value of an enterprise can be markedly different from its market value. A close analysis of the Preliminary Information Memorandum betrays the government’s intentions clearly. In fact, the document has been designed in a manner so as to sell off the airline to a preferred oligarch for a pittance.
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