Good ambition

A Silicon Valley can’t lack an international airport

Karnataka Chief Minister S M Krishna has offered the assurance that the Bangalore international airport project will take off and become operational by December 2004. A tight schedule of implementation has now been drawn up. The joint venture partner with 74 per cent equity stake is to be finalised by next month-end. The project has already gone through various feasibility and re-feasibility studies, just as it has also seen the exit of major prospective partners like the Tata-Raytheon-Singapore consortium, fed up with the government’s lukewarm response. According to Mr Krishna, all clearances and financial closure are now expected to be in place by early January 2002 and work is slated to start a month on. The first phase of the project will be completed in a 30-month timeframe, and the airport will be operational by December 2004. Really?

All this sounds too good to be true. Assuming honourable intentions, it seems too much to expect that the state government can work to this tight schedule, given its laid-back attitude in the past. A multi-crore project like this will need scores of clearances from various agencies, including central establishments. Six long years have elapsed since this first private sector international airport in the country was mooted. But it got bogged down thanks to pulls and pressures from vested interests and a singular lack of political will. But all is not lost, though costs are bound to go up. There are in fact some questions about the commercial viability of too many international airports in the peninsular region but the planning has obviously to look to the future rather than to what present traffic levels can justify. It is certainly unacceptable for international visitors to have to travel long distances and circuitous routes to Bangalore, with its Silicon-Valley pretensions and hopes of being a magnet to international businesses. The government must spare no effort now to ensure that all loose ends are tied up quickly. Karnataka has to keep in mind that, save for information technology, its recent track record in attracting capital is not exactly worth writing home about. Its mishandling of a Cargill here and a Cogentrix there has in fact shown the state in poor light. It is Mr Krishna’s challenge now to redeem matters.