Air India needs some drastic brand therapy. But why would it wilfully destroy the portly Maharajah, arguably the last shred of emotional connection with the airline? Created for an internal letterhead by Air India’s Bobby Kooka and JWT, the Maharajah’s showed up in the unlikeliest places — sumo wrestler, Spanish matador and more — smiling benevolently over Times Square and Kemps Corner. He’s a supple icon, having proved that he can bend with the times. He was briefly deposed in 1989, but restored after popular protest. After the Air India and Indian Airlines merger in 2007, there were rumours that he would be retired. And now, it’s been suggested that the Maharajah calls up associations of louche irresponsibility, and that Air India must shed its flabby PSU image by finding a new icon, like a guy in a “designer suit”.

Brand icons have to be tended like fragile plants. Product spokespersons like the Pillsbury Doughboy and Ronald McDonald come with complex instruction manuals, and focus groups and brand handlers plot every detail of their behaviour. A character like that is nothing if not internally consistent. And because of this utter identification between the icon

and the thing being sold, it stands to sense that a product that has completely lost its shine would turn on its mascot first.

But in this particular case, killing the gallant, potbellied little man for the systematic rack and ruin of Air India is pretty ludicrous.

The national carrier’s financial implosion and depleted market-share are entirely its own doing, and no slick mascot in a designer suit is going to rescue it from its own difficult rebuilding. Meanwhile, at least Air India can count on the decades of accumulated affection for the Maharajah.