At the time of filing, Jet Airways was in a tailspin and heading into bankruptcy. That may have already happened by the time you read this. What concerns me here, however, is all of the angst-ridden hand-wringing – by politicians, the business press, commentators, and the public – that has accompanied the slow demise of what until recently was India’s premier private airline.
Regulators and analysts alike appear to view the imminent demise of Jet Airways as nothing short of a national catastrophe, and therein lies a clue to the immaturity of India’s brand of capitalism at the present moment. It is true that the 1991 liberalization and its aftermath swept away the worst excesses of the license-permit-quota raj, but the new private sector capitalism that has thrived since then has been, by and large, rather heavily regulated, and forced to live side by side with a still large public sector, in some cases competing with it directly.
