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Best of BS Opinion: The erosion nobody noticed, until it finally snapped
There's a moment, familiar to many of us, when something stops working, a fan blade hangs at a tilted angle, a Wifi signal stutters, a houseplant starts yellowing, and we realise we never really took care of it. We didn't break it. We just forgot it. And when that moment scales up, when systems and states neglect maintenance and vigilance, a quiet decay sets in. No mutiny, no sirens. Just a slow, silent coup of incompetence, where power isn't taken, but quietly slips away. Let's dive in.
That's what David Fickling observes in the global oil industry, which, after four decades of steady growth, finds its crude core stagnating. The numbers are sobering. While global fossil fuel investments now trail clean energy, US shale rigs are being idled and even Saudi Aramco is redirecting its might to gas. In China and India, demand has already begun to fray. The collapse isn't loud. It's methodical. A drip-drip of underinvestment, climate pivot, and a dawning realisation that the oil age may be dimming not with disruption, but with quiet retreat.
That same drift echoes in India's public safety, writes Devangshu Datta. Three recent tragedies, a Dreamliner crash, a Mumbai train collision, and a stampede, might seem disconnected. But zoom out, and a pattern emerges: failing infrastructure, absent accountability, outdated systems. When seven die daily on Mumbai's trains and it causes no outrage, it's not just tragedy, it's institutional indifference solidified into routine.
Mihir S Sharma reminds us that even in aviation, where precision is everything, the old ghosts return. In the wake of Air India 171, history casts a long shadow: pilot hierarchy problems, ignored warnings, and a recurring fog of premature conclusions. The Dreamliner crash may be new, but the neglect feels familiar.
Shekhar Gupta finds the same quiet slippage in foreign policy, as Washington toys again with 'hyphenation', lumping India and Pakistan together in strategy. It's not a crisis, but a memory of one, and a hint that global diplomacy may be lapsing into old habits. India's muted response, more calibration than outrage, shows maturity, but also the fatigue of having to remind the world, again, that it has moved on.In art, too, a different kind of forgetting plays out. Ranjita Ganesan explores Jafar Panahi's cinematic rebellion in winning the Palme d'Or for It was Just an Accident, a reminder that resistance isn't always loud. Sometimes, it's a quiet, stubborn act of storytelling. The system tried to forget him. He filmed anyway.
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Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Air India plane crash: Baba Ramdev points to ‘foreign conspiracy', mentions Turkish agency
Two days after an Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad claimed over 260 lives, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Saturday suspected a possible 'foreign conspiracy', alleging the involvement of a Turkish maintenance agency whose contract with Indian airports was terminated last month. 'I got to know that an agency from Turkiye used to take care of the maintenance and service of the aircraft. India will have to keep a close eye on the aviation sector,' Ramdev told ANI news agency. 'There is a possibility of a conspiracy by that agency.' Without providing any evidence for his claims, Ramdev said that India must stop allowing foreign companies to interfere in such sensitive matters. Air India's London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner (AI 171) flight crashed into a medical hostel complex in Ahmedabad's Meghaninagar on June 12, moments after taking off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. Also Read | Teen who recorded viral Air India crash video 'very scared', records statement About 260 people were killed, including the 241 out of 242 passengers and crew on board the aircraft. Last month, the Centre had revoked security clearance for a Turkish firm -- "Celebi Aviation" -- that took care of operations at nine key Indian airports, including Delhi, citing national security concerns. The government had also asked IndiGo to end its aircraft lease agreement with Turkish Airlines within three months. Also Read | 'Mayday call, then altitude loss in seconds': What govt said on Air India crash The steps came after Turkey had taken Pakistan's side during India's Operation Sindoor, which came in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 civilians, most of them tourists, were killed. Celebi provided ground-based services at nine airports across India – Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Cochin, Kannur, Chennai, and the MOPA airport in Goa. Its services include passenger handling, baggage processing, aircraft loading, cargo management, and ramp services. The company also runs one of Delhi airport's two cargo terminals as a joint venture with the airport operator.
Scroll.in
5 hours ago
- Scroll.in
Air India crash top updates: Centre says Boeing 787 fleet being examined, 11 DNA samples match
Union Civil Aviation Minister K Ram Mohan Naidu on Saturday stated that the data from the black box of the Air India plane that crashed and killed more than 270 persons on Thursday was being analysed. In the first press conference after the crash, Naidu stated that the Union government will look into all possible theories of what could have caused the disaster. He added that an extended surveillance of all Boeing 787 flights operational in India would be conducted. On Thursday, the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft, which was en route to London's Gatwick airport from Ahmedabad, crashed just 33 seconds after taking off. This is being viewed as the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade. There were 242 people aboard the aircraft. One passenger survived with ' impact injuries '. A total of 274 bodies had been sent for postmortem, according to The Times of India. This included 33 persons who were killed on the ground when the aircraft crashed into the hostel building of the BJ Medical College in Meghani Nagar area of Ahmedabad. Here is more on this and other top updates: In the aftermath of the crash, eight of the Boeing 787 aircraft have so far been inspected following the directive issued Friday by the aviation safety regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said Naidu during the press conference. Later in the day, Air India announced that it had completed one-time safety checks on nine out of 33 of its Boeing 787 aircraft. It added that the checks were still underway for the remaining 24 aircraft and warned that this could 'lead to higher turnaround time and potential delays on certain long-haul routes, especially those to airports with operating curfews'. The Tata Group has announced that the families of the 33 persons who died on the ground will also receive a monetary compensation of Rs 1 crore. Beside the medical expenses for the injured will be fully covered, The Indian Express reported. An unidentified official told the newspaper that 'nothing has been decided' about providing jobs to the next of kin. The DNA samples of 11 of the persons who died in the crash have matched, Dr Rajnesh Patel, the head of surgery at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, told The Hindu. One body has been handed over to the family. On Friday, a police officer had said that six bodies were handed over to the family after identification. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge visited the site of the crash on Saturday and also met those were injured and are being treated at hospitals. 'My deepest condolences and thoughts are with the families of the victims, crew, pilot and people on the ground who have lost their lives, including medical students,' Kharge said on social media.
NDTV
6 hours ago
- NDTV
"Dangerous Manufacturing...": Boeing Whistleblower To NDTV On Air India Crash
New Delhi: Ed Pierson - the ex-high-level Boeing manager-turned-whistleblower, who testified before the United States Congress in 2019 that he had flagged safety issues with the company's 737 Max variant - has told NDTV of "chaotic and dangerous manufacturing" at its production facilities. This comes amid scrutiny over the horrific crash of Air India's AI-171, a London-bound flight that lost thrust and slammed into a residential area in Gujarat's Ahmedabad 36 seconds after take-off. Flight AI-171 was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. It was the first crash involving a 787 since 2009, but it has turned the spotlight back on long-standing concerns about Dreamliner manufacturing standards and on John Barnett, a whistleblower who died under mysterious circumstances last year. It also brings the focus back on Sam Salehpour, another Boeing whistleblower who accused the company of putting profit over safety, and retaliating against his publicly raising red flags. "That's right... during testimony (to the US Congress in April last year) Mr Salehpour, who is the engineer with Boeing who reported problems, i.e., structural issues, and he provided pretty startling information about employees forcing parts to fit together (by jumping on them, according to some whistleblowers) when you aren't supposed to force them together..." "... and he expressed concern and apparently did everything he could, from inside the company, to raise these concerns and wasn't getting an adequate response," Mr Pierson told NDTV. "So he felt it was necessary to become a whistleblower." In April last year Mr Salehpour, who spent nearly two decades at Boeing, told US lawmakers he had been "put through hell" for raising concerns about the manufacturing processes. Among specifics flagged by Mr Salehpour were structural problems in the Dreamliner's fuselage; he claimed small gaps and improper assembly could cause possible structural failure. Boeing had strongly disputed the whistleblowers' claims, including those by Mr Salehpour, sand said the Dreamliner had been put through 150,000 safety tests and audits. It also denied retaliating against the whistleblowers after many, including Sam Salehpour, alleged retribution. The Federal Aviation Administration, the United States' top aviation authority, launched an investigation based on Mr Salehpour's claims. The FAA cleared in-operation 787 planes. On Wednesday, hours after the Air India plane crash, American officials continued to state there was no immediate safety data that required halting of Boeing 787 flights in the US. READ | US Aviation Body Says New Problem In Undelivered 787 Dreamliners Asked if the concerns flagged by Mr Salehpour could have been present, or indeed, contributed to the horrifying Air India crash, Mr Pierson told NDTV "it is possible..." "... concerns raised by Mr Salehpour could have been present in the Air India plane," he said, pointing out, "The problems he identified.. apparently the planes were being bult like that for a long time." On his own whistleblowing - regarding the 737 Max planes - Mr Pierson said there were multiple indicators of "chaotic and dangerous manufacturing" at the company. A grounded Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 at Los Angeles International Airport (File). "We were rushing to build planes... employees were under pressure to do overtime... there were parts issues, aircraft systems issues, functional system testing and electrical system testing, in particular..." The AI-171 plane crash is being investigated by Indian authorities; flight AI-171's black box has been recovered and the voice and systems data it contains is being analysed. The government has also set up a high-level committee to inquire into the accident and suggest guidelines to reinforce the safety of planes and passengers. Information available at this time only shows the plane lost thrust seconds after take-off. The Air India plane fell on a students' hostel near Ahmedabad airport. The pilots sent a distress radio message to Ahmedabad Air Traffic Control between 1.39 and 1.40 am, the government has said, but did not then respond to the ATC hailing the doomed plane. All but one of the 242 people on board were killed; the lone survivor was a British-Indian man sitting in seat 11A, and at least 31 deaths have been confirmed on the ground, taking the total dead to 274.
