India crash lands

Monday morning8217;s relatively clear skies didn8217;t lift the fog of politics over the Delhi airport. The break in weather, in fact, thr...

Monday morning8217;s relatively clear skies didn8217;t lift the fog of politics over the Delhi airport. The break in weather, in fact, threw in sharper relief the issues that came up as the wholly expected winter fog led to scores of cancelled flights and hundreds of cantankerous passengers. Don8217;t blame low cost carriers for the mess. That LCCs have added to traffic volume should be welcomed. The point is the Delhi8217;s airport8217;s abject incapacity. But what else can we expect if we have a political system that turns something as simple as airport modernisation into a major controversy? Some politicians are batting for airport unions, some are being bloody-mindedly oppositional, some are trying to jockey for bigger roles in the ruling coalition, some are disguised parliamentary shock troops for corporate interests and some, bless them, have found ideological grievances. Had none of this happened, or had the government enough political muscle to win the contest quickly, Delhi8217;s airport, along with Mumbai8217;s, would have been on a makeover course.

Certainly, the sordid farce repeated every year about the instrument landing system would have merely been an amusing anecdote by now. It is, instead, a scary reality, as an investigative report by this newspaper shows. The ILS Category III B, supposedly man8217;s ultimate direction finding answer to God8217;s foggy questions, has been two years in the planning/acquisition stage. When the Airports Authority of India finally got round to installation/training, the US manufacturer had closed shutters for Christmas. Which is why many air travellers had to spend their Christmas in the bleak, cold, badly-maintained Delhi airport.

AAI is run like every other sarkari department. But in the proposed modernisation scheme, which may or may not happen, it still calls the equity shots in the joint venture. And two years have passed to come to that 8220;compromise8221;. All this would have been a joke had something dreadfully serious not been happening at the Delhi airport 8212; every story, every picture, every TV shot and every phone call back home is telling the world that a self-claimed putative economic super power runs its Capital8217;s airport like a Fourth World, sub-Saharan railway station. For India, 2005 is ending with excellent macroeconomic numbers, good corporate performance, a bustling stock market and some wonderful stories of individual wealth creation. Reasons enough for the world to come to us. But it can8217;t. Our airports are a mess, and our politicians are defending 8220;public interest8221;.