Raise these skies

The Economic Survey in the run-up to the July 2004 Budget had revealed that a comprehensive civil aviation policy based on the Naresh Chandra Committee recommendations was on the cards. The decision to bring a new Bill in the coming Budget session that will engender a Civil Aviation Economic Regulatory Authority is of a piece with that intent and is to be celebrated as evidence of the current boom in the Indian aviation sector as indeed the UPA government’s commitment to reforming it.

Today, the multiplier effects of opening up this sector are there for the world to see — and, as the Bangalore air show indicates, the world is watching. Reform has shored up the bottomlines of the national carriers, Air-India and Indian Airlines, even as private players have registered steady growth. The latter now account for over 60 per cent of domestic air traffic, with new players constantly flying in. Apart from the three older private airlines, Jet Airways, Air Sahara and Deccan Air, which are busy spreading their wings — Jet Airways’ IPO is to open next week — emerging ones like Royal Airways and Kingfisher Airways are presently hard at work acquiring new aircraft. And there is always room for more. According to projections, over the next five years, India would need 200 additional aircraft to the 100-odd that are now in operation. This would demand a quantum leap in airport infrastructure and here, too, there has been progress. While the international airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore are taking shape, the Rs 20,000 crore project of modernising and restructuring the Delhi and Mumbai airports is expected to take off by the middle of this year. Another 80 airports around the country are also in the queue for modernisation. An independent regulatory authority to effect a level playing field and to ensure both accountability and transparency in this rapidly growing sector is, therefore, certainly the need of the moment.

It would have been difficult to envisage this sea — or should that be air? — change even a decade ago. Today’s civil aviation boom reflects the pent-up demand of a nation that has been in denial for decades; one that was caught in the snarls of the old licence-quota bureaucracy. It should prompt a serious rethink among those who are sceptical of economic reform and encourage the opening up of sectors that have thus far resisted change.