Vigilance fears deterring employees from taking decisions: Air India chief Lohani

NEW DELHI: The fear of being slapped with vigilance cases and spending retirement years as an under trial may be deterring decision-making in public sector undertakings. While Air India chief Ashwani Lohani has long held this belief, he encountered this fear first hand at a meeting with airline employees on Friday.
"In interactions with my men, latest being today, it is becoming increasingly evident that the fear of taking decisions and then making a mistake or being judged wrongly in hindsight is for real.The fear including that of vigilance is like an overarching shadow of threat looming almost always," Lohani said in a Facebook post on Friday.
"Have to build a culture where men are fearless in taking decisions, decisions that are taken with the right intent, results notwithstanding. After all there are no guarantees more so in commercial decision making nor everything can have a quantifiable advance justification," his post read.
Lohani's took to social media to express this fear for the second time in a week. Last Saturday, he had written a blog titled "pinning the executive down; those who idle shall commit no mistakes!" in which he had said "the omnipresent shadow of vigilance and other probe agencies over processes undertaken by the executive has caused maximum damage to the public sector."
Lohani's views are learnt to have drawn the support from several PSU heads and senior officials.
"The fear of taking a decision that later does not prove to be correct and invites legal action makes us feel we should just pass our tenure without doing anything. Lohani had the courage to say what we never could," said a former senior official of Air India.
Lohani's last week blog had said so much. "Air India, that has been a victim of gross indecision in recent years and only lately had started to come out of its slumber, will also take a hit," it had said after the CBI had registered a case over alleged irregularities in procuring software worth Rs 225 crore in 2011. Lohani had become Air India chairman in 2015.
"Tendering has with passage of time emerged as the biggest hurdle in sarkari organizations. Fear grips the minds of those involved in it for even a slightest deviation even if helpful or carried out in the interest of the organization can land people in a soup and there are cases galore in all organizations. When shall we start accepting the supremacy of deliverance and modify the tendering processes," the Air India chief had said on social media last week.