Ajith Nair

Its sad news that high flying crew of India’s premier airline are now grounded. They had contracts which said that they could be sacked with immediate effect and that is what happened. While my sympathies rest with the employees, it is obvious that they hadn’t read the contract fully before signing. Even if they did, they never thought this would happen to them. None of us ever read our job contracts. The durability of our jobs is assumedly given and we simply sign on the dotted line. The only parts that we read are ones related to salary, role and title. The rest is legalese which is ignored, to one’s peril. The sad part is how this incident has created space for that goon called Raj Thackeray to enter the civilized industry space. Starting with railway applicants, cab drivers, graduating to MERU cabs and now to airlines, the devil is making his footprint felt. Jet employees, are now courting the devil to their advantage. So educated, stable minded, courteous youth who smiled and serv...

MBA business primers speak about environmental factors as key in devising strategies. The reaction of businesses to their environment is now a point of intense scrutiny and debate. World over, businesses seem to be at the receiving end of global vicissitudes, some might argue they are the ones who caused it in the first place. Whether its contaminated milk in China, the Financial crisis in the West or what happened to the Nano in our country, businesses are being closely watched for what they do or what they don’t. In fact, a case in point is KV Kamath and the amount of PR activity that ICICI Bank has undertaken to assuage anxieties about whether it will go the Lehman way. An interesting trend is the amount of front page space newspapers provide for businesses and what they are doing. If one were to rewind ten years and do a simple comparison of no of business related headlines then compared to now, it’s a no brainer which way the numbers will show up. The case for business diplomacy, ...