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In India, they have grown less and less fond of foreign, or non-Indian, airline pilots. In fact, if the nation’s government and the agency in charge of regulating civil aviation have their way, there won’t be any non-Indians flying the commercial airways by December, 2013. But as is so often the case inIndia, the issue is complex. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the airline regulating agency, had in March, 2009 ordered all Indian airlines to dismiss all foreign pilots by July of 2010. But the DGCA backed down when it became obvious that demand for experienced domestic airline pilots exceeded the supply available from Indian flight schools and from pilots leaving the military. And apparently this situation persists. There just are not enough Indians with the training and experience needed to qualify as captains in India’s ever growing airline industry. However, the cost of the foreign pilots and the impact of that cost on domestic airlines is becoming a big problem, literally. There are about 400 non-Indian pilots in India, about 20% of the flying force; but because of their experience foreign pilots are paid much more than Indians in the same positions. This has, understandably, caused quite a bit of resentment amongst the pilots and co-pilots of the Indian airways. (Aviation Week – India Wants Foreign Pilots Out)
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“The pay is not very good for hangmen, partly because of the paucity of hangings, but also because the job is considered contract work.” Here in the United States, there is little indifference towards the death penalty. It is a polarizing practice, which people either enthusiastically support or very vocally condemn. In India, the death penalty is not regarded in such black-and-white terms. The country’s death penalty is a remnant from the days of British rule, which determined that hanging, rather than firing squad or lethal injection, would be the accepted method of killing condemned criminals. But in the decades since the end of British rule, legal battles over the death penalty have raged and India’s laws have been modified over the years to the point where the actual hanging executions are very, very rare. In fact, the last hanging occurred in India in 2004. At the link, you’ll read the very interesting story of how the Indian government recently had to hunt high and low for a willing and certified hangman executioner to carry out a death sentence handed down to a murderer in the northeastern state of Assam. In a country of 1.2 billion people, you wouldn’t think that finding such a rarely-needed professional as a hangman would be that difficult. But, well, it was. (The New York Times – Hunting a Hanging Pro)
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