Opinion | The Price Of Monopoly And What IndiGo’s Crisis Reveals |
When economic liberalisation came to India in the 1990s, we were promised a marketplace of choices. The vision was simple: dismantle the Licence Raj, allow private players to compete, and let the Indian consumer reap the benefits of efficiency and innovation. For two decades, aviation was the poster child of this success. We went from the monopoly of Indian Airlines to a vibrant sky filled with Jet, Sahara, Kingfisher, Deccan, SpiceJet and IndiGo.
But the scenes witnessed across airports recently tell a different story. Thousands of stranded passengers, tarmac altercations, and a collapse of national mobility triggered by a crisis within a single airline. The IndiGo fiasco is not merely an operational failure; it is a structural warning. It is the inevitable price of extreme market concentration. It shows how when one entity sneezes; the entire nation now catches pneumonia.
Knowingly or not, India has sleepwalked into an era of consolidation that has replaced the public monopolies of the socialist era with the private duopolies of the capitalist present. From aviation to telecom to our most markets, we are transforming from a democracy of consumer choice into an oligopoly of “national champions". And the regulatory architecture charged with policing these markets has not evolved to meet the risks created by such concentration.
IndiGo’s collapse makes that vulnerability impossible to ignore. For years, the airline symbolised the promise of efficient and low-cost aviation. But when it began cancelling hundreds of flights and grounding aircraft, the headlines only hinted at the deeper institutional problem. India’s skies have become so concentrated that one company’s routine operational missteps can paralyse national mobility. In effect, we have built a market where a private bottleneck becomes a public emergency.
The numbers tell the story plainly. IndiGo carries........