What Breakdowns Teach Us About Building Better

It always starts small. A single cancelled flight, not the polite-weather-update variety but the kind that ripples outward like a system remembering every unresolved weakness at once. One moment you’re sipping airport coffee with misplaced optimism, the next you’re in a slow-moving queue, watching ground staff morph into unwilling therapists for a crowd betrayed by an airline they trusted. IndiGo’s meltdown this week wasn’t a freak disruption; it was a stress test. One airline stumbled, and India’s entire aviation network trembled.

Across six days, cancellations cascaded: December 2 brought delays blamed on fog and “operational reasons,” December 3 saw tens of cancellations in major cities, which only got worse over the next three days. Only then did the government step in, ordering immediate refunds and capping fares as rival opportunistic airlines raised prices sky-high. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation, which Srinath Sridharan describes as an institution of “Delayed Governance and Conditional Action,” announced that it was “considering” stricter oversight.

But nothing about the crisis was unforeseeable. The shortage of pilots wasn’t an asteroid strike; it was the predictable convergence of new rest rules, winter fog, and pre-scheduled software updates. Yet the DGCA demanded no buffer staffing, no phased rollouts, no transition audits. It woke up only after everything buckled.

As Minari Shah frames it, what began as an operational crisis has morphed into a full-blown sector-wide reputational fire. With one airline holding 60% of the market hostage, the uncomfortable question isn't just about delayed flights, but who pays the price—in convenience and safety—when the entire system's credibility is gambled.

The irony deepened when mandatory pilot rest rules were abruptly rolled back. Pilots, whose exhaustion helped trigger the crisis, were suddenly allowed less downtime—just days after regulators insisted the new standards were essential for safety. Krishnadevan V captured the moment brilliantly: in a country where citizens can’t sleep thanks to inflation, liquidity swings, and flight chaos, officials alone appeared serene. It was articulated most clearly by Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran, who said that he wasn’t “losing sleep” over the rupee breaching 90, arguing the slide posed no threat to inflation or exports.

For many of us, the aviation crisis carried an emotional echo. My first solo flight was on Jet Airways: on time, roomy enough, quietly reassuring. Affordable premium before the phrase grew quaint. I stayed loyal until those final months, each flight tinged with the sense of something slipping away. I know a few people who speak of Kingfisher the way people describe a first love. Vistara softened the transition briefly—back when it was Vistara, not yet Air India. But the disappearance of choice has consequences. IndiGo’s dominance on key routes nudged us into a quiet resignation: itne mein itna hi milega. We rationalised cramped seats, endless add-ons, and service-lite flying—not because we wanted to, but because the alternatives vanished.

And that settling instinct extends far beyond airports.

While passengers camped on terminal floors, the rupee spent the week gliding past 90 to the dollar. Manoj Rane notes that a six-year slide from 73.80 to above 90 implies about 3.7% annual depreciation. But the compressed drop from 89 to 90 in just two weeks, and a 6.25% fall over the past year, suggested discomfort behind the curtain. V Thiagarajan captured this mood shift perfectly: holiday budgets recalibrated, friends cancelling Paris plans, WhatsApp groups buzzing with the “invisible tax on aspiration.” What used to be a Bloomberg chart is now dinner-table conversation.

The speculation was natural: had the RBI abandoned its defence? Governor Sanjay Malhotra finally addressed this during the Monetary Policy Committee review, insisting that the RBI targets neither level nor line, only orderly movement. As Babuji K summarises, the central bank will not underwrite comfort at any level of the rupee; it will only prevent disorderly transitions. For corporate India, this was not semantics but a redrawing of the map. The “hope strategy” of postponing hedges in anticipation of RBI intervention is officially obsolete. You hedge, or you fall.

The timing of the rupee’s slide made the monetary policy decision all the more riveting. The RBI cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.25%, extending cumulative easing to 125 basis points since February. Malhotra called the moment a “rare Goldilocks period”—growth strong, inflation subdued. Headline inflation indeed plunged: 0.25% in October and 1.7% for July–September, undershooting the lower tolerance band for the first time since inflation targeting began. As BasisPoint Groupthink puts it, this wasn’t a cut to spark growth but an acknowledgment that the COVID inflation cycle had ended.

And yet, for many, the optics jarred. With GDP growth at 8.2% in July–September, why ease? Dhananjay Sinha calls the dovishness out of sync with the official narrative of strength. A 25 bps cut, ₹1 trillion in bond purchases, and a $5 billion FX swap paint a reflationary stance grounded not in triumph but in unease. Rupa Rege Nitsure agrees: despite headline strength, policy moves and liquidity injections reflect concern about investment and consumption momentum.

The contradictions go deeper. R. Gurumurthy notes Malhotra’s claim that inflation may now be “too low,” a quirk that complicates policy because the wedge between nominal and real growth has narrowed uncomfortably. Vivek Kumar observes that while this is being sold as a Goldilocks moment, the RBI is reading forward—windscreen, not rear-view. Kirti Tarang Pande warns when everything feels “just right,” the greatest risk is forgetting how quickly the table can shake.

Kalyan Ram argues Malhotra’s real aim was to strengthen transmission, not promise another cut. After June’s mixed signals rattled markets, the RBI seems intent on shaping expectations with surgical precision.

But expectations alone don’t move credit. Liquidity does. Madhavi Arora warns that liquidity has slipped below 0.5% of NDTL from over 1% mid-year, pressured by unsterilised FX intervention and forward-book maturities. With $22–25 billion in FX sales since September, rupee liquidity has been permanently withdrawn. She argues that a clear OMO programme of about ₹2 trillion is essential to restore balance. Without it, banks already running credit-deposit ratios north of 80% will struggle to lend even as rates fall.

Sujit Kumar, however, offers a more optimistic interpretation: that the MPC finally expressed the flexible inflation targeting mandate with clarity and conviction. For purists of the regime, this is worth celebrating.

Beyond monetary policy lay quieter but essential reforms. The RBI announced that 244 Master Directions now consolidate what used to be scattered across 9,445 circulars dating back to 1944. Mint Owl calls this a potential legacy-defining move. Condensing a regulatory maze into a coherent manual is institutional housekeeping of the rarest kind. It is exactly the kind of anticipatory governance the aviation crisis lacked.

Meanwhile, Ajay Srivastava writes that Vladimir Putin’s visit renewed Moscow’s ambition to lift trade with India to $100 billion by 2030. But the imbalance remains vast: India exports under $5 billion to Russia while importing almost $64 billion, mostly oil. A trade deficit of nearly $59 billion forces a hard question: what does India sell to Russia in meaningful quantities? Unlike the Soviet-era rupee-rouble framework, today requires a modern mechanism rooted in competitiveness. Srivastava adds that all this unfolds as Washington presses India on Russian crude purchases and market access. Managing dependence, not choosing sides, is the real story.

Domestically, Sakshi Gupta asks whether India’s current sprint is structural or merely cyclical. While infrastructure upgrades have improved capital productivity—from 4.6 units pre-pandemic to around 4 now—labour productivity remains largely flat. The unevenness tempers the optimism of the 8.2% print. Converting a cyclical high into enduring momentum requires rebuilding private-sector confidence and acknowledging the asymmetries within growth.

Against all this, Michael Debabrata Patra’s “Here Comes the Sun” offered a rare note of lyrical optimism. His meditation on India’s solar revolution—capacity expansion, grid innovation, the quiet resilience of clean energy—felt like a gentle reminder that some forces are inexhaustible. And Arvind Mayaram’s vision of AI-enabled, circular-capital PPPs pointed to how infrastructure could be built on transparent, self-sustaining systems rather than brittle fiscal scaffolding. In a world of narrow fiscal space and swelling climate commitments, these ideas feel less like futurism and more like inevitabilities.

Across aviation, currency, policy, and geopolitics, a thread unites the week: we often fix problems only after they break. It’s reactive governance, crisis-prompted liquidity, last-minute rule rollbacks, and refund orders issued after days of mayhem. IndiGo’s collapse wasn’t an aberration but a preview of what settling eventually costs.

But this isn’t a story about despair; it’s about recognition. We deserve institutions that act before systems fracture, airlines that compete on quality rather than inevitability, and policies calibrated with foresight rather than fatigue. And perhaps most importantly, we deserve an economy—and a society—that aspires to more than “itne me itna hi milega.”

As Patra reminds us, the sun still shines. Things can get better. But only if we let breakdowns teach us how to build better.

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