Civil aviation minister Vayalar Ravi is reading the wrong script for a genuine problem. He wants to set up a fund to underwrite expenditure of airline companies that fly un-economic routes. The essential air service fund reads suspiciously like a scheme to cream the private sector airlines to partly finance Air India?s huge losses. The minister had to just take a quick read from his party colleague Kapil Sibal to find out how telecom companies came into rural telephony to realise why the plan will not succeed. For years the rural telephony fund remained unused, with even state-owned BSNL not able to make headway. Once the sector achieved a critical mass, the fund has again remained unused as the private sector did not need an incentive to chase rural buyers. In the aviation sector, the same virtuous cycle is gathering mass. For starters, there are already over 120 daily flights to the Northeast, presumably the region that the minister had in mind for the fund. These flights are not running on social conscience but as profitable routes. True, compared to the national grid of about 1,600 daily flights, this is less than 10% but that itself is expanding. As the region becomes more connected through highways, the markets will develop more, giving a fillip to better connections.
In Jammu & Kashmir, flights are restricted because of the safety issues. The Srinagar airport, for instance, does not operate at night, automatically restricting the numbers. What is needed right now is a big push for developing genuine low-cost airports that has been in the works for ages. Setting up a fund instead, with the attendant issues of administration, will only give an additional role to the officers of Rajiv Gandhi Bhawan that we can safely do without.
