The grounding of Jet Airways (India) Ltd, the country’s oldest private-sector carrier, isn’t just bad news for customers and its 23,000 employees. It raises yet again a question that’s puzzled two successive governments and will continue to bedevil whichever party takes power after elections conclude next month: What’s killing capitalism in India?
Jet Airways was born in the early 1990s, when India’s closed Soviet-style planned economy had just started embracing globalization and private enterprise. Back then, few Indians could afford to fly; now the country has the world’s fastest-growing aviation market. An airline that was at one point the industry’s dominant player should theoretically have been able to thrive.
