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Journalism of Courage
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi may not like it but tourists and businessmen — both domestic and international — seem to be shunning his state, going by the passenger records of the railways and airlines.
Traffic to the state has dipped drastically if load factors of airlines are any indicator. Post-Godhra, seats are going abegging in trains too. The airlines are still calculating their losses while the railways claim they have already lost Rs 50 crore due to refunds and under-utilisation of capacity.
‘‘Normal tourists, traders and businessmen are keeping away from the state. It is mainly politicians, NGO workers, members of various committees and commissions and some journalists who are taking the flight to Ahmedabad or Vadodara. The flights are carrying less than 50 per cent load,’’ said an official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The DGCA receives monthly load factor figures from various airlines.
The number of passengers travelling to Ahmedabad and Vadodara is less than half compared to last year. ‘‘The figures for months of March and April are a strong indicator. Last year in March nearly 6,000 passengers landed at Vadodara while this year there were only about 2,500. The same goes for Ahmedabad. While 15,000 passengers landed at Ahmedabad in March last year, this time there were only 8,000,’’ said an Indian Airlines official. The number of passengers to Bhuj and Rajkot has also gone down considerably — from 1,500 to 800 in Rajkot and from 800 to 500 in Bhuj.
Jet Airways, another airline with regular operations in Gujarat, has been facing the same problem. ‘‘The number of passengers to the sector has really gone down but we have to continue normal operations. For example, to cut costs we can easily do away with one of the two daily flights between Delhi and Ahmedabad but we cannot,’’ said a Jet Airways official.
IA is relatively better off than Jet since government officials and members of various committees and commissions — heading for Gujarat — were expected to patronise the government-owned airlines.
The railways too were suffering losses in the region. ‘‘At a time when we generally run special holiday trains to accommodate the rush to places like Kutch and Porbandar, even our scheduled trains are going with almost half the seats vacant,’’ said Mani Jit Singh, Western Railway chief public relations officer.
