The Indian government has sold its national carrier, Air India, to the Tata Group, ending the long-wait for the divestment of the loss-making Airline.

The bidding was awarded to the country’s biggest conglomerate as the highest bidder at about $2.4bn. The deal includes a 100% stake in Air India and a low-fare unit in Air India Express as well as a 50% holding in ground-handling company AISATS.

“Talace Pvt Ltd won the bid to own 100% of government stake in Air India,” Tuhin Kant Pandey, secretary, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) announced today.”

“Bidders have agreed to all terms and conditions. Five bidders were disqualified as they did not meet the criterion,” the Dipam Secy said. “The process was carried out in a transparent manner with due regard to confidentiality of bidders.

Air India has many assets, including prized slots at London’s Heathrow airport, a fleet of more than 130 planes and thousands of trained pilots and crew. Under the takeover deal, Tata Group will retain all AI employees for one year, and can offer VRS in the 2nd year, as per the Aviation Ministry.

Group of ministers known as the Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism, headed by home minister Amit Shah and included finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, commerce minister Piyush Goyal and aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, approved the bid winner.

The Tata group originally founded the airline in 1932 before it was taken over by the government in 1953. The government has failed to make the national carrier profitable, and overtime, it has racked up losses worth $9.5bn, leaving it with no option than to sell the airline.

The success of the takeover by Tata is a big boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government reforms, as the previous attempt to sell 75% of the airline in 2018 failed.

The deal was brokered after the government made it more attractive by simplifying the debt terms for buyers. The reserve price was fixed at Rs 12,906 crore, and the winning bidder will take Rs 15,300 crore debt, according to EconomicTimes. Bids for the carrier were sought at an enterprise value. Under the formula, a minimum 15% was to go to the government and the rest will be used to reduce existing debt.

Analysts say that Air India would bring in benefits for the Tatas, if the group plays it right.

“Air India has come full circle, back into the arms of its founders, the Tatas. Bold, brave move but will it be bountiful for the new owners? If they play it right, take advantage of the vacuum presented by a post-Covid landscape, they can carve a new future for the national airline,” said Shukor Yusof, founder of Endau Analytics, a Kuala Lumpur based consultant.

“India’s got a lot going for aviation – a rising middle class, likely growth in travel & tourism domestic & from abroad & it sits between the Gulf & Southeast Asia, an area of vast potential for air travel. Finally it fits nicely into (PM) Modi’s privatisation plans. Of course there will be lots of challenges, including riding fuel costs, intense competition from LCCs & if Tata has the staying power to manage heavy losses during the initial takeoff period,” he added.

Analysts believe Air India remains attractive due to profitable infrastructure at its disposal and passenger growth of around 20% per year.

BBC noted that in addition to its fleet of over 130 aircraft, Tata will now have control of the following: Airline’s 4,400 domestic and 1,800 international landing and parking slots at domestic airports, as well as 900 slots at airports overseas.

Air India also owns millions of dollars worth of prime real estate. According to the aviation ministry, its fixed assets – land, buildings, planes – in March last year were worth more than 450bn rupees ($6bn).

The airline also has more than 40,000 pieces of art and collectibles, including an ashtray designed and gifted by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali. In return the airline had given Dali a baby elephant, which was flown to Spain.

The existence of joblessness or unemployment in Nigeria has eaten deep into the country’s bone marrow, that Nigerians as a people have endlessly lived to see it as a monster that has come to devour the human race in its entirety.

The dangers inherent in joblessness are so conspicuous and frightening in such a way that everyone has become very conscious of its presence, hence invariably making tremendous effort to avert the menace.

In spite of the frantic and tireless steps usually taken by the teeming citizens and successive governments to ensure they aren’t trapped in the pothole cruelly dug by unemployment, they still overtime encounter its ruthless scourge, apparently signifying that their effort isn’t good enough or that something is really wrong somewhere.

However, my last visit to one of the West African countries lately made me understand that Nigeria isn’t exceptional while discussing unemployment or that the term is not peculiar to the acclaimed giant of Africa.

But, it seems the degree at which it parades its tentacles and elbows in Nigeria is so enormous that the country is ostensibly taking the lead in the comity of nations. This is the sole reason many are deeply concerned and bothered over the anomaly, hence the need for drastic measures towards cushioning the excruciating effects.

It’s noteworthy that unemployment is not a personal plight but a general one, thus the essence of a societal approach in a bid to tackle it. This is why countless schools of thought have overtime shown great concern over the lingering nature of the cankerworm as well as aired their views on how best to tackle it.

Though unemployment isn’t a convincing excuse to indulge in any crime, hence no discerning mind encourages people to resort to it, it’s worth noting that its scourge remains one of the prime reasons all sorts of criminal activities have escalated in recent times.

Another disturbing occurrence that’s apropos of unemployment is the employability status of our present days’ graduates. It’s not anymore news that most of these youths are obviously unemployable, thus posing a threat to the labour market and their chances of being meaningfully employed.

The plight as stated in the above paragraph is mainly attributable to lack of adequate knowledge as acquired from their respective institutions of learning, or inability of our various undergraduates to stick to the needful while on campus.

Taking a painstaking study of all these issues, it’s needless to assert that the ongoing unemployment crisis in Nigeria is not unconnected with dilapidated learning environment cum facilities, decline in the country’s value system, and insufficient employers of labour, among others.

Though nepotism is highly condemnable and unacceptable, those who attribute unemployment to it might be making a big mistake because if there are sufficient firms or employment opportunities, such a practice like favouritism or what have you would hardly be detected by anyone.

Before now, or in the olden days, Nigerians were gainfully engaged with various works simply because the jobs were readily available and the population was conspicuously far lesser than what we could witness now.

But with the growing lack of sustainability of various government-owned establishments coupled with the astronomical growth of the country’s population, the job spaces abruptly became overwhelmed by the number of people in the labour market.

A lot has really gone wrong in the system, but the good news is that, we can once again get it right if the needful is done by the relevant authorities. This can only be actualized by revisiting the drawing board.

It would be very wonderful for the government to comprehend that the endless unemployment issues can aptly be addressed by truly embracing tech-driven measures. It’s worthy of note that only technological approach could significantly alleviate all crises that are apropos unemployment.

First, we need to revamp the country’s education sector. The current educational system of the Nigerian society has really deteriorated that an urgent, candid and apt measure is required towards its revitalization.

We must be ready to train our young ones with a view to becoming self-reliant in their respective abilities. Since the population is growing by the day and the firms aren’t increasing meaningfully, there’s a compelling need to prepare these Nigerians so they could emerge as entrepreneurs or employers of labour rather than seekers.

Our various technical colleges, which have apparently gone into moribund, must be revived in earnest to keep the ground running. Those days, graduates of these institutions – even without proceeding to a higher level of learning – could stand on their own as well as comfortably raise wonderful families with their earnings.

The governments at all levels ought to endeavour to equip the various tertiary schools in their respective jurisdictions, so that, the graduates can defend themselves in any setting and equally start up something meaningful without ‘giraffing’ for the availability of any form of white-collar job as it is currently the case.

In view of the above, the schools’ authorities must strengthen the value of the ongoing Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES), which was primarily set up by the government to aid the technical upbringing of the learners irrespective of their disciplines.

Hence, it’s high time the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), the body imbued with the powers to service the SIWES and sustain its viability, started doing the needful. The authority must endeavour to face priorities squarely at the expense of frivolities, as I rightly mentioned in my previous works.

They must deploy a functional mechanism that would ensure thorough monitoring of the industrial trainees from time-to-time as long as the training lasts. This proposed task mustn’t be shortchanged for any reason whatsoever if we truly want the SIWES to be result-oriented.

Our engineering graduates, just as it’s being observed in the medical and law fields, ought to be mandated to undergo a compulsory one-year national programme strictly on further industrial workshop training. This should serve as a prerequisite to the ongoing National Youth Service.

Inter alia, the governments need to provide an enabling environment to enable all tech-driven talents to thrive as well as ensure that the available patents of the numerous institutions domiciled in their jurisdictions are duly commercialized. Research works in any quarter must also be given due attention since technology is strictly dependent on research.

Conclusively, it would be sacrilegious to beat about the bush while discussing tech-driven matters, because technology is all about facts. Hence, the government needs to acknowledge that the suggested measures can never yield significant and tangible results if we continue to relegate the power supply issue to the background.

We must understand that only uninterruptible electricity can encourage entrepreneurship to a great extent as desired by the people. Therefore, this technological factor requires the highest sincere attention.

This critique is targeted to express that Nigeria as a people can only aptly address unemployment-related cases if technological measures are duly deployed, hence the need not to shortchange realities.