Opinion: An airworthiness certificate must never look like it is for sale

An airworthiness certificate is a promise made by strangers to strangers. The passenger who boards, the trainee who climbs into a cockpit and the family waiting at home cannot inspect the rivets, the logbook or the regulator's file. They trust a chain of signatures. That is why an alleged Rs 2.5 lakh bribe inside that chain, in Chennai, matters far beyond the cash reportedly seized.

Periyar asked people to test every authority by reason, not by reverence. Apply that test here. A safety regulator earns obedience not because its office carries a seal, but because its decisions can survive daylight: who inspected, who approved, what was deferred, and why. If any link in that chain can be bought, the seal becomes theatre and the passenger becomes the unpaid insurer of someone else's corruption.

The accused in the CBI case are entitled to a fair trial, and this page does not decide guilt. Institutions, however, do not have to wait for a verdict to repair themselves. The DGCA should publish certification timelines, name the stages where discretion sits, rotate officers who deal repeatedly with the same firms, and disclose arrests and suspensions the moment they happen. A regulator that hides behind silence teaches every firm watching that access matters more than compliance.

Anna's politics began with the dignity of the ordinary person. There is no dignity in telling a young trainee pilot, or a family buying its first flight ticket, that safety depended on whether somebody knew whom to pay. Kalaignar's administrative tradition, at its best, understood that welfare is not only schemes and subsidies; it is also the boring integrity of offices that ordinary people never enter.

The left has always argued that public systems must be stronger than private influence. Aviation proves the point in metal. A market can sell comfort, speed and status. It must never be allowed to rent the state's safety signature. When certification is clean, nobody applauds. That silence is the sound of trust working. The task after Chennai is to make sure the silence means integrity, not fear of asking questions.