Air-India is thinking of selling its
art collection, one of the finest treasures in India. A rough estimate by
officials is that its monetary value may
be around Rs 350 crore. This will be financially insignificant to a company which has a debt of Rs 43,777
crore and accumulated losses (in the last five years) of Rs 27,700 crore. So
why are they selling the family jewels?
It must be, primarily, the plebeianism
of the government mind. That was what
reduced Air-India from the proud flag-bearer it was in J.R.D. Tata's days to
the icon of incompetence it became in
the hands of politicians and
bureaucrats. That was also what took some of our universities and institutions like Lalit Kala Akademi from
glory to ignominy. It takes quality to
produce quality. For many years now the quality that made India bright and
beautiful has been on the decline.
It was quality
that helped Air-India rule the air waves in the early days. JRD's
professionalism – after all, he was India's first licensed pilot – made the
airline respected. Commercial Director Bobby Kooka's flair made it beloved.
Kooka was one of the movers behind the art collection. The frontline collector
was Jal Cowasji, Air-India's publicity chief. He was a recognised art
connoisseur and was encouraged by the management to buy and commission works of
art. Air-India's offices in the leading cities of the world became famous for
their specially-commissioned murals by Indian artists.
Naturally Air-India became a patron
of the soon-to-be-celebrated masters who constituted the Progressive Artists
Group of the 1950s Bombay. People like M.F.Husain, K. H. Ara and B. Prabha
would be given free tickets in lieu of
paintings. Air-India also collected
antiques, old clocks, jewellery and studio photography.
The general public got a taste of the treasure in 2008 when Air-India brought out a
coffee-table book (Mapin Publishing) with 201 colour illustrations and analyses
by four experts. It is a feast of a book. But it was also a sad reminder – that
only a couple of generations ago we had
cultivated minds that could think of collecting and preserving such exquisite
achievements of the human imagination, and that we have lost it.
What we have instead are destroyers.
They flourish in a cynically corrupt political environment, as is evident from
the continuing Lalit Kala Akademi
scandal. This 58-year old institution has held no exhibition since 2003,
there is no inventory of works, many works have disappeared and diversion of
funds is rampant. The main culprit is known and has been publicly named. The Akademi's
last chairman, Ashok Vajpeyi, issued a long order in 2011 relieving the
man, Secretary Sharma, of his post. The Legal Department of the Ministry of
Culture cancelled the order and reinstated Sharma.
An acting chairman took over for a
period of six months ending July this year. This was Balan Nambiar who not only endorsed
Vajpeyi's assessment of the Secretary
but went public about it. Saying that the Akademi's main problems were “dishonesty, cheating,
mismanagement and swindling of finances”, Nambiar described the Secretary as
“the one individual who has systematically destroyed the Akademi over the past
decade. His ten years as the Secretary is the worst period of the Akademi”.
Ashok Vajpeyi is a distinguished
poet and critic whose reputation as a culture administrator is enhanced by his
experience as a civil servant. Balan Nambiar is an internationally renowned multimedia artist. How is it that such authorities are
upstaged by petty wirepullers and their petty godfathers in the Ministry of
Culture? How is it that the Minister of Culture
has no eyes to see what all others see? Why is it that the Vajpeyis and the Nambiars of today, like the JRDs of
yesterday, are cast aside for parasites to prosper?
To ask such questions is like asking
why Suresh Kalmadi was kept at the helm of Commonwealth Games even after he had
shamed the country before the eyes of the world. The answer to all questions is the same: We are like that only.