Simply Fly

by Capt G R Gopinath

  One day when I met Sam, he said, ‘Gopi, I got a job!’ I was thrilled for him. ‘Where?’ was my next question.

  For most people, the job of a helicopter or airline pilot evokes images of glamour and abandon. I was happy for my friend. I assumed he had a job as a pilot, at last, but was taken aback by what Sam told me. He had been offered a job not as a pilot but as administrative-cum-security officer in a courier company! Sam said his salary was Rs 10,000 a month. He had reported to work the previous day.

  The news was shattering. My friend is an outstanding personality. He was a colonel in the army, had led men, had fought wars, had won the Sena Medal which recognizes a soldier for exceptional bravery. He had won the medal for his dare-devil display of courage in Kashmir against the Pakistan Army flying helicopter rescue missions. Such a noble and brave heart was ending up as an administrative-cum-security officer! This was bad for morale. I felt sad and disturbed.

  Lessons from China

  Meanwhile, the visit to Thailand and China was organized. This was in 1995–96. We spent the first two weeks in Thailand and were in China for about twenty days. In that country we travelled to the province of Guangzhou and were taken to the deep interiors. We saw and experienced Chinese agriculture at first-hand. I noted a similarity between Chinese and Indian villages, in terms of the poverty, ignorance, and lack of hygiene. The principle occupation in the villages was farming. People were largely naïve and uneducated. The trauma of communism was slowly making way for the trauma of capitalism. There were a few scattered shops. Farmers owned property. The government had redistributed land that had once been collective property. Peasants owned anything between half an acre to two acres. It was a time when there was a huge social churning going on and, stunned by its own economic success, China was unable to integrate vast populations of the rural uneducated poor into the mainstream of largely urban islands of prosperity.

  Silk farmers produced cocoons and sold them to government-owned mills, the size and scale of which truly surprised and amazed me. China is the country credited with the origin of silk. There is a legend about how it came to India. Some 2000 years ago a Buddhist monk was supposed to have smuggled a few moths out of China and brought them to India. They laid eggs and the story of Indian silk began.

  The Chinese created a habitat for the silkworm indoors. They evolved a method of breeding cocoons and drawing out yarn on a spinning wheel. This is their contribution to the silk industry. They bred the worm in such a way that one single variety produced more silk than the others. They evolved worms that—fed on mulberry—to an exclusive fine breed that yielded the finest gossamer thread and had the finest lustre. The West has always shown a preference for the fine varieties of silk produced in China and Japan.

  India has been producing silk for over 2000 years. The industry produces many varieties of worms. Mysore silk is among the most famous and is produced by a variety of worms native to Karnataka, the regions of Kunigal, Chamarajanagar, Kolar, Mysore, Bengaluru, and Ramanagaram abounding in this variety of worm. The yarn produced is used to weave Benares and the Kanjeevaram silk saris. It is silk that is wonderfully suited to Indian fabrics, lending them the peculiar stiffness that gives the saris the right fall and crispness. Weavers throw in woofs of gold thread to make the saris look grand. The classic Kanchi, Benares, and Dharmavaram saris are rich in texture and weight.

  There is another variety of silk in India which is harvested by native forest dwellers. The tribal people pick the cocoon from the forest trees, made by worms that feed on a variety of forest leaves from oak and castor oil plants. The silk produced by these cocoons has its own distinctive texture and colour, and is amenable to traditional methods of weaving and printing. They produce varieties of silk such as moga, eri, and tussore. The original Indian silk may have been derived from native varieties. Indian farmers later bred them. India also has a greater variety of silk traditions than China. In China, silk is accorded the status of family heirloom on the lines that gold ornaments in India are passed on from generation to generation. Chinese emperors wore grandly crafted silk robes and silk slippers. India however produced silk both for the rich and the commoner and has perhaps more varieties of weaving and printing techniques.

  I became aware of some of these techniques and traditions as a farmer. I was interested in understanding Chinese techniques and looked for them when I visited that country. However, in the immediate aftermath of communism, China had not accorded the kind of importance silk originally held. In the process Japan assumed a leadership position in silk, India was the second largest producer at the time with China in the third place, and Thailand following it. However, after China decided to open up its economic sphere, in a style typical of the Chinese, the government set-up massive silk yarn and textile mills. Overnight, China became a giant in silk production and began unprecedented dumping in India. The Indian silk farmer reeled under this onslaught. This was the backdrop of my visit to China. I visited mills and workshops. The size and scale of their industry was overwhelming, and they had acquired the most sophisticated machinery. The West loved the soft, lustrous silk produced in China of a kind which in the past was made in Italy, France, and Switzerland. These countries had the machinery needed to lend a lustrous finish to the silk. Silkworm disease and shortage of labour led to a collapse of silk farming in Europe, and was part of the large shift that took place there from manufacturing to services. The European silk industry eventually collapsed, surviving in only a few insignificant pockets as a cottage industry. Japan, India, China, and Thailand took over. The Chinese silk farmer was given a massive support to boost silk production as the Chinese government decided to produce for the West and imported sophisticated machinery for this purpose. Virtually overnight China became the world’s leading production centre. Being a communist economy with total state control, they changed policy to an investment-oriented regime and bulldozed their way. Japan slid from its position as number one, with China soon regaining its top slot with India a distant second. China’s unimaginably explosive economic growth, dating to as far back as in 1995, simply astonished me during my visit.

  Silk farmers in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh had been hard hit and were going bankrupt. They protested ‘government apathy’ and wanted the government to salvage their industry. They said that the Chinese government had been able to control the import of silk into their country while ours had not been able to follow suit.

  A new regime was beginning to operate in international trade. General agreement on tariffs and trade became more inclusive and more globalized. Trade barriers broke down, textile manufacturers were told they could import yarn if they were in a position to match the value of import with export. When things go wrong, we find it easiest to go for the government’s jugular, though it is true that governments often make rules to suit particular industries.

  I am not an economist but I understood the complexity of world trade as a farmer and an entrepreneur. The issue of raw silk yarn imports from China, on one hand while protecting Indian silk farmers was always complex. I pondered about this while touring the large Chinese cities. I wondered at the scale of progress and the social changes they had brought about, but such reflections were tinged with a sense of sorrow. The cities were experiencing unprecedented escalation in business activities. Along a 150 km stretch of road from Guangdong to a rural town, the name of which I forget, there was not a square centimetre of vacant land. The highway was dotted on either side by marble and granite-cutting mills that were feeding the insatiable appetite of the construction industry and providing for the new high-rises and the development activity in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong.

  The government campaign to attract foreign investments was wholehearted. The hotel in which I was accommodated boldly solicited investment proposals. The government advertisement publicized a free trade zone in Guangdong, just outside my hotel. It said investments in the free trade zone were eligible for tax benefits, income tax breaks, and concessional tar
iffs, with single window clearance. The government sought to impress upon foreign guests at the hotel where China had kept its doors ajar, with economic free trade zones open to foreign investment.

  Anticipating a flow of foreign investors, China had built massive five-star hotels to accommodate them. I had seen hotels of such a scale only in Las Vegas. Compare the 300 to 400 hotel rooms offered in India’s best five-star hotels to the five-thousand-room hotels of Las Vegas. The social infrastructure had also changed beyond recognition with more hospitals, schools, parks, and nightclubs.

  The Chinese realized that for infrastructure nightlife was crucial if investors were to be wooed to visit the country. I do not mean legalized or licensed prostitution as in Amsterdam or Las Vegas but good restaurants, pubs, theme parks, music, and places to unwind after a hard day’s work. Nightlife implied that these amenities and attractions would remain open throughout the night. Expatriates appreciate such facilities because, separated from family and friends, they usually work late into the evenings. Notwithstanding the wholesale development that was taking place across China, including economic, physical and social infrastructure, there was one thing that saddened me. In the midst of all this I could see the future—massive devastation of the countryside. I could visualize large tracts of farmland and wilderness built over by massive construction projects, relentless mining, and the bulldozing of everything that stood in the way of ‘development’.

  China was taking a giant step forward and was the envy of many other emerging economies. It seemed to have overtaken India in many areas. Deep within me, however, I did not want India to follow China’s path to development. This path of irreverent modernization made me fearful for India’s future. These feelings were in line with the lessons I had learnt on the farm. Besides, China’s experiment would have important consequences both for India and rest of the world. Destroying the topsoil to create buildings would ultimately mean destroying the world. In China I could sense disaster waiting to unfold. The picture was the same everywhere: in the countryside, in district towns, in sleepy hamlets, and in busy cities. On the positive side, the frenetic, relentless pace of industrialization had taken China twenty years ahead of us. It actuated a train of thought in my mind: what did China do to become what it is today?

  Foundation of Deccan Aviation

  The question did not leave me for a long time. It burrowed away like a worm in my head. I think I had a flash of insight one day. It could have been in Shanghai or Guangdong or Singapore. I was reading a newspaper story about a Vietnamese girl. During the Vietnam War (1969–75), almost the entire country was razed to ground. Buildings, factories, villages, and homes were burnt down. Rice fields, woods and forests were carpet-bombed. Millions had become homeless refugees. There was a refugee crisis on a massive and tragic scale. Thousands fled the shoreline in makeshift boats. The US and France evacuated thousands. Many of us can recall the picture of a nineyear-old Vietnamese girl fleeing the site of Napalm bombing, her back still in flames. The bombing was carried out by the US air force. That day in the newspaper was the story of a similar girl orphaned by the war. A French couple had adopted her and taken her to France. She grew up with her French-foster parents and became a helicopter pilot. After Vietnam became independent and the North and South united, western countries, particularly America and France, were consumed by the guilt of what they had done to that country and hoped to assuage this through positive engagement in development. It occurred to the benefactors that they could combine altruism with self-interest. A campaign was launched for the rebuilding of Vietnam. Rebuilding efforts were a great opportunity for American and French businesses. The Americans, French, British, and Japanese returned to Vietnam in the early 1990s. They came with huge investment packages. They also issued an accompanying caveat: construction contracts must be awarded to American or French companies. If a donor gave a billion dollars as aid for setting up a hospital or a factory, the equipment required for it would have to be purchased from businesses in the donor country. Jobs are created back home and profits accrue to the investors. All this happens even as Vietnam gets what it badly needs. It is a win-win situation. This is an accepted practice on the global diplomatic stage. India should take the cue and learn from this example.

  With investments flowing into Vietnam, a need arose for interpreters to help western investors connect with Vietnamese culture. The girl in the newspaper story who became a helicopter pilot returned to Vietnam with investors to participate in the rebuilding effort. She brought a helicopter because the surface transport infrastructure was in shambles. It was impossible initially for people to move from one place to another because of the scale of devastation. There were no roads, no highways, no bridges, no railways, and no airports. The entire country was littered with unexploded mines, a terrifying legacy of the war, compounding the problem of travel. The safest and speediest way to travel was by helicopter. The girl did just that. She flew investors and aid workers to different parts of Vietnam in a helicopter and became a national icon.

  Reading the story of her life suddenly prompted an idea in my mind. It occurred to me that our infrastructure was as bad! Helicopters were a great innovation for transport in Vietnam. Helicopters in their majestic flight may look glamorous from the ground below, but the sky is the highway along which helicopters fly. I saw that a country as large and as diverse as ours has enormous untapped potential for helicopters. A list of business uses unfolded before me. VIP visits were one. Then I could use helicopters for surveys of power lines, gas pipelines, for mining and land-use mapping. A geophysical ground survey of a mining area running to 500 sq km would take a year, while a helicopter-based survey would take a day. The helicopter flies low to undertake geophysical and electromagnetic survey. The scientist is able, at this low altitude, to carry out measurements for the location and type of ore, its extent, the veins along which it can be found, and form a rough estimate of its worth. This, however, calls for highly specialized flying.

  I could see many other applications too: in tourism, for surveys in the petroleum and mining industries, in urban and rural land use mapping, for aerial photography and videography, for 3D mapping, for film shoots, and medical evacuation. I decided that on my return to India I would go straight to Sam and discuss the matter with him. I would share with him what I thought about the many applications of helicopters. As ever, my dreaming and my decision making were simultaneous.

  It was reform time in India. P.V. Narasimha Rao had come to power following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi had set the reform process in motion. He had been a young and dynamic leader who recognized the role of technology in shaping India’s future. Fortunately for India, the momentum of reform did not die with the leader.

  The BJP was right wing to its core. It was right wing on religion, right wing on reforms and capitalism. Congress began left of centre but moved rightwards towards the centre. P.V. Narasimha Rao as prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh as finance minister, and Dr P. Chidambaram as commerce minister successfully ushered in economic reforms. The Congress was however losing its hold as a monolithic ruling bloc. It had ruled almost uninterruptedly for forty years and remained staunchly left of centre all along. Now that it had begun moving right of centre, and had also begun losing its stranglehold over the electorate, it was obliged to acknowledge the emergence of powerful regional parties in the states.

  I sensed that at the time an impetus was hiding in the womb of history. In very lucid moments I could see the future trajectory of events. The only question was where to begin. I could see in my mind’s eye the irreversible shift of history. There were strange, almost vulgar, high points to the tumult that was afoot in Asia. China had brazenly embraced capitalism without abandoning communism. Events that had taken place at Beijing’s central square in 1989 had cast a shadow over China. It seemed eager for economic reforms; almost with inordinate haste. The end of the 80s was the vulgar high point of China. It almost seemed as if the economic edifice of
China was being erected on the tombstone of failed democracy.

  The other major event was the collapse of the USSR. India had relied heavily on Russian support after independence.

  How does one look at the India versus China equation? India has always looked at China as a kind of rival. There are both similarities and dissimilarities. There has been a question of regional hegemony between the two. After both Russia and China discarded old beliefs, abandoned the communist path and adopted the capitalist mode of organization and production, with China making enormous economic strides, India had to seriously rethink its approach based on socialist pretensions and find itself a new lodestar. Leftist ideology in India had weakened. Left-leaning politicians realized they could not return to power unless they created new jobs by supporting the private, corporate sector. Non-Congress led governments in many states (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra, among many) saw that they just had to attract investment help in order to create jobs. It became a matter of regional pride to outdo other states in terms of inward investment. Chief ministers made a beeline to large corporations such as Toyota, Hyundai, and Volvo, seeking investment and inviting them to set-up manufacturing units, offering inducements in the form of huge tax breaks and investment incentives. I felt the reforms under way were irreversible. All pointed to a future that had a favourable environment for growth.

  There were two other factors that gave the idea wings. One was that there were no helicopters in the country’s commercial space. The few that existed were owned by large industrial houses in the private sector. These houses kept them for private and personal use or used them as a tool to gain political patronage, not for public benefit. There was not a single helicopter company apart from Pawan Hans in the public charter space. I would therefore have no competition whatsoever. The second was that there were thousands of pilots and engineers who had retired from the army, air force, and navy who were still young, capable but had no jobs. It then suddenly struck me like lightening, ‘My god, this is a combustible mix of factors! One can’t go wrong!’ It then immediately dawned on me why Sam was not getting a job. The trail of my thought went this way. As a first-generation entrepreneur if I were to enter any entrenched business space, I had no prospect of success unless the idea had countrywide resonance and caught the imagination of the people. It is always simple in hindsight but it then occurred to me that I had no competition!