Day: 18 February 2026

Flying Without a Safety Net: Why India’s Aviation Workforce Needs Structured Representation

Captain Santosh Kumar Tripathi
Flying Without a Safety Net: Why India’s Aviation Workforce Needs Structured Representation

The aviation sector is also one of the fastest-growing sectors in India’s economy, contributing through air transport services and indirectly through tourism, trade, logistics, and manufacturing. Yet this explosive growth has not translated into decent earnings of the employees. Nearly 80% out of 369,000 jobs earn less than 5 lakh annually. The most invisible component of this labour is helplessness. The workers remain bonded due to long notice periods, deferred salary, unpaid leave, gratuity or EPF.

Licensed Production to Design Sovereignty: Reframing India’s Aerospace Strategy

Captain Santosh Kumar Tripathi
Licence Production Raj in India.

Is India still stuck in 2nd Industrial revolution of mass production. Remember Henry Ford, who further developed this concept in late 19060s. Are we happy with large scale (?) production to meet our local requirements. This is like we still live in sellers market. While the world has moved to 3rd industrial revolution and even revolutionary 4th and 5th industry state which encompasses environmental sustainability, open architecture, reliability, interoperability and data driven production which basically means buyer oriented market. This new state is a new normal and ensures a streamlined processes for mass production of product variants with increasing emphasis on quality and uniqueness. How long before we reach there? Or with present thrust on licence production in aviation, will we ever reach there?