Don146;t wing it

Delhi and Mumbai airport reform began after the government, in a show of determination that one wishes was more frequent, cut through byzantine procedural controversies. But the process could have again stopped or got stalled indefinitely after the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group ADAG, one of the losing bidders, issued legal challenges. But in two verdicts in eight months 8212; the Delhi High Court in April and the Supreme Court, which heard the appeal, on Tuesday 8212; the courts not only refused to stay the reform process during the hearings but also upheld the government8217;s awards. Any other decision would have not only meant a huge setback to airport modernisation but might have produced domino effects, in terms of encouraging litigious protests over contract awards in other big-ticket infrastructure projects.

We had argued, when the GMR and GVK consortiums were declared winners late January, that the process was not perfect but it passed procedural muster. The Supreme Court, while declaring that the ADAG appeal was 8220;sans merit8221;, also noted that midway changes in evaluation norms do not aid transparency. Hopefully, ministers and officials in charge of the bidding processes will understand exactly what the court had in mind when it observed there are considerable differences between developing real estate and infrastructure. Better-designed bidding processes are a must. If more reminders are needed, look at the current stalemate in the national highway project, where a similar battle over minutiae is being fought and some of the economic bureaucrat warriors are veterans from the war over airport reform.

But just as the government should pick winners more smartly, losers must accept a fair verdict. Corporate bidders for big infrastructure projects can8217;t take every decision that goes against them as evidence of deliberate mischief. ADAG should be reminded of the following: GMR got Delhi airport because it had matched ADAG8217;s financial bid and since GMR emerged as the clearest technical qualifier, it was given a choice between the Delhi and Mumbai airports; after that GVK got what GMR hadn8217;t picked, Mumbai, because GVK8217;s financial bid was higher than all the others. So the technically and financially best qualified bidders won. That should have been a cue for the losers. The Supreme Court judgment, happily, is a cue for the government to fast track the extension of airport reform. Chennai and Kolkata are next on the list. Lesson from Delhi and Mumbai: right at the beginning gets it right.