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Journalism of Courage
If there8217;s a buzz, it8217;s the tout near you
Delhi8217;s Indira Gandhi Airport is about the worst face India can show an incoming foreigner. spends a night at the real-time horror show
RAGHAV Arora has stood in lots of queues. But he didn8217;t expect a series of queues inside and outside Delhi8217;s Indira Gandhi International Airport IGIA. This is the software executive8217;s first trip abroad, he8217;s flying to Vienna, and his expectations of the airport haven8217;t quite matched reality.
8216;8216;It feels like a railway station. I went to the washroom and there were people taking a bath,8217;8217; says the 26-year-old, standing in his third queue of the evening, this time for his boarding pass, at 11 pm on Saturday, September 27.
There are no signs for passengers like him, not seasoned travellers and less than sure about the formalities. 8216;8216;There are no signs in the departure lounge. It8217;s very confusing,8217;8217; says Jatinder Singh, another business executive trying to catch his flight.
Life doesn8217;t improve at immigration. Stony-faced officials, working on 13-hour shifts, mechanically sift through inummerable immigration forms and passports at the 16 counters. One counter 8212; 8216;8216;Diplomats and Officials8217;8217; 8212; lies vacant, others are packed.
This particular Saturday, two officers have called in sick and there8217;s a staff shortage; 8216;8216;1986 facilities for passengers in 2004,8217;8217; grins an immigration official.
By the last security check, exhausted passengers have given up complaining.
The capital8217;s interational airport is clearly in sick bay. Almost all international flights depart between 8 pm and midnight at intervals of 15-20 minutes. On the Saturday we were there, 35 flights took off between 8 pm and midnight.
According to Airports Authority of India AAI figures, in a day 43 flights depart and 5,700 passengers board flights from IGI. In 1985, when this terminal was built, it catered to 2,600 passengers who took 23 flights. Same facilities, double the traffic.
Airline traffic has increased even in the past year. In 2003-04, six new international airlines, including Pakistan International Airlines, Air Canada and Myanmar Airlines, started operating from IGI.
Meanwhile, an hour before the reported departure time of their flight, Arora and his colleagues are still in the same queue. 8216;8216;I should have reported four hours back. At this rate I will miss my flight standing in the airport,8217;8217; mutters a passenger.
But the chaos inside the departure wing is matched only by the chaos outside. There are four entrances and six X-ray machines. The CISF constables on duty diligently check tickets and match passports. Each passenger takes two minutes to clear.
But passengers with e-tickets take much longer. Airlines now leave long exhaustive lists of passengers with e-tickets at the four gates. The constables check each name against the list. One CISF constable, pointing to a list of 50 names, is quick to say, 8216;8216;No, no. We don8217;t take time.8217;8217;
Say that to Jessica Flesner, standing with her backpack in one of the slow-moving queues, yawning and knackered even before she gets into the airport. 8216;8216;I like small airports but Delhi airport is too crowded,8217;8217; she says as a man pushes past her in the queue.
Arrival
NEW Zealanders Joe Hopker and David McKiness8217; India experience starts with a man in blue screaming 8216;8216;taxi8217;8217;. 8216;8216;Taxi taxi, come here,8217;8217; shouts the man standing before a car rental counter just after customs clearance.
The tired budget tourists have just stepped off an Aeroflot flight at midnight. They stop, uncertain. 8216;8216;Sir, come here for taxi,8217;8217; yells a young girl from the radio taxi counter.
Unconvinced, the two ignore the counters, half of which are swankily done up but shut, and step out of the transit area. They push their trolley into the crowded arrival lounge.
The loss of another customer is met with disgust by those manning the official pre-paid counter run by Delhi Traffic Police. 8216;8216;This is an international airport not a subzi mandi vegetable market,8217;8217; mutters Satveer, a constable on duty. A hand-written sign reading 8216;8216;Tourist Police8217;8217; lies on a table with two empty chairs.
Welcome to Delhi. The haggling that starts in the transit area follows tourists to the visitors lounge and beyond. In spite of the claims made by the CISF and Delhi Police, touts still target passengers.
A man in a faded shirt and light brown trousers sidles up to Hopker and McKines. 8216;8216;Want to go Connaught Place? I take you for Rs 400,8217;8217; he says, a short distance from two CISF constables. The New Zealanders refuse and walk out.
The tout melts into the background. 8216;8216;They read the body language of a tourist and then approach them. They target foreigners and elderly people,8217;8217; says Devender Singh, general secretary in the Taxi Owner and Operator Union.
The two walk off wondering where to find a cheap hotel.
But even getting out of the arrival terminal can take hours. Tejpratap Singh, a Delhi resident, says, 8216;8216;The checks after the arrival take a long time. It took me an hour to finally come out of the arrival lounge. If they could speed up, we could get home sooner.8217;8217;
The delays start from the immigration counter and continue to luggage collection from the conveyor belts. The airport recently increased the length of the belts but that hasn8217;t helped. According to Airports Authority of India AAI figures, 5,700 passengers arrive every day on 43 flights. Everything, officials concede, takes a long time.
A tourist booth has been set up next to the six conveyor belts. Though the booths are supposed to be manned by officials from the airlines, Tourism Ministry and others, only six people were seated there when The Sunday Express went visiting on September 27.
The arrival lounge is not a pretty picture. Most seats are torn, with the foam spilling out. The free phones placed for passengers have never been known to work. Apart from a few STD booths, an odds and ends shop and drinks stalls, other counters are all boarded up. If there8217;s an incessant buzz, it8217;s probably the tout next to you.
Apart from touts, men who call themselves employees of travel agencies from Punjab also operate discreetly. They carry faxes with lists of passengers who they say are coming on package deals. But the men target any passenger going to Punjab. 8216;8216;Punjab AC buses,8217;8217; they whisper. They take passengers to Tata Sumos parked outside the airport and from there to buses parked on NH8 near the Radison Hotel.
Outside, the chaos mutliplies. Touts, relatives of passengers, taxi drivers and hangers-on make for a formidable crowd. Brawls break out between taxi drivers touts and fairly regularly.
Hugo Franco, an arrival from France, buys a pre-paid taxi slip and pushes his trolley to the row of taxis. He waits there, a little confused.
A taxi-driver finally tells him he needs to get another taxi mumber alotted, because the one on his slip is not there. Franco goes back to the counter, gets another number. Again the taxi is missing. The frazzled Frenchman starts screaming.
A little later taxi drivers spot a tout leading a passenger. The tout runs off and the taxi drivers are left shouting and blocking the way of arriving passengers.
Relax, it8217;s just another night at the airport.
With
Policy in the slow lane
Plans to get private help for Delhi and Mumbai airports have hit an air pocket
OVER a year after the former NDA government gave its clearance for restructuring Delhi and Mumbai airports through the joint-venture route, there8217;s been no take off. The initial eight-month deadline lost meaning with the announcement of elections. Now the UPA government says it could take upto March 2005 to select the consortium.
The responsibility has now fallen on Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, trying balance the demands of the Left-backed unions of the Airports Authority of India AAI with the need for world-class airports.
The first outcome of this tough balancing act was a rework of the document inviting expressions of interest EOIs from consortia. It was earlier envisaged that 74 per cent stake would lie with the private consortium, required to have a tie-up with a global airport developer. The remaining 26 per cent would be with the AAI.
While the broad formula remains the same, a modification was made by the UPA government. Foreign equity within the consortium was capped at 49 per cent. It was initially seen as a deterrent to interested foreign investors but, official sources say industry feedback confirms no foreign partner was fishing for higher equity anyway.
To his credit Patel stood firm thereafter. He initiated the process of reconstituting the Group of Ministers, headed by then finance minister Jaswant Singh in the NDA raj. The GoM is now headed by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, with Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Law Minister H.R. Bharadwaj and Patel as members.
Bids were subsequently invited and, on July 20, 10 EOIs were received see table. The inter-ministerial group, the layer of officials below the GoM, has completed its meetings and is likely to propose retaining all 10 bidders for the next stage, which would require them to submit detailed proposals.
However, this will be preceded by the release of a document spelling out the parameters that have to be addressed in the proposal. The document will be prepared in consultation with Airplan, the global technical advisor for the project and ABN-AMRO, the financial consultants.
Patel says the entire process of receiving proposals, their evaluation and final selection of the consortium will take at least another five months. 8216;8216;I am targeting completing the process by March. But in the meantime we will continue efforts to improve facilities at both airports.8217;8217;
For instance, Delhi airport plans a major facelift that includes a redone facade at the international terminal.
Expect nothing overnight. 8216;8216;Look even after this process selecting the AAI8217;s JV partner is over it will take between three to five years for any visible change to happen at these two airports. Whichever private player comes in will need that much time. But the passenger cannot be ignored till then,8217;8217; Patel told The Sunday Express.
Small comfort for anyone who8217;s used Delhi or Mumbai airport recently.
As the information desk plays Solitaire
At Mumbai8217;s Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport, and meet the man who won8217;t switch on the X-ray machine. 8216;Not till the line grows longer8217;
Departure
IT8217;S 1.30 am on a rainy September night. Passengers, tired of unending security checks, sprawl on black slumbrettes, lulled to sleep by soporofic classical music. Suddenly, in coarse English, a voice croaks out of loudspeakers concealed in the false ceiling: 8216;8216;Passengers travelling to London please proceed for security check immediately.8217;8217;
Come along for a tour of the Sahar Air Terminal of Mumbai8217;s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
At the new Terminal 2C building departure area, inaugurated in 1999, a dull grey floor stretches all the way, while a not-too-high false ceiling has hundreds of ventilators sprayed with black dust.
Signboards produced of cheap yellow plastic give you directions. Four X-ray machines handled by Air-India 8212; two of them don8217;t work 8212; have a dozen attendants in bright blue uniform, chit-chatting away.
A restaurant named 8216;8216;Celebrations8217;8217;, with bizarre decor and steep prices, makes it a total put-off. A plate of idlis costs Rs 110, a bottle of Pepsi Rs 50.
Walk a few steps further and watch passengers undergo their first security check as they enter the immigration counter. From here, an escalator 8212; it has a huge list of dos and don8217;ts 8212; leads you to the transit lounge.
This has a spacious and clean look, comfortable chairs and slumbrettes, luxurious Maharaja lounges for Air-India8217;s non-economy class passengers and a VIP lounge. But that8217;s where it stops. The cattle class passenger has little to cheer him, aside from a few television sets.
Bernard Paul, a businessman returning from Paris, is heading for Delhi and waiting in the transit lounge. 8216;8216;There is not a single foreign exchange counter here where I can change my euros for rupees. I am so hungry, but I can8217;t even buy a coffee,8217;8217; says Paul. Meanwhile the attendant at the Lipton Tea dispenser snores away.
An AAI officer wakes her up, while assuring Paul that a forex counter will be up and running 8216;8216;in the near future8217;8217;.
Using toilets is a tricky feat. Some urinal pots are filled to the brim. In others, the water from the flush splashes on users. The hand-drying machine is antiquated. Taps are old, loose and leaking, the mirror is hazy, its frame is rusted and the wash basin platform is eternally wet.
8216;8216;I just used the restroom and was shocked to see attendants eating dinner on the floor,8217;8217; blurts a sleepy middle-aged American lady. To her, India must seem a great place to get out of.
The red STD/ISD call booths are few and crowded. There8217;s a free local call service provided by Tata. The phone doesn8217;t work.
You enter the more crowded Terminal 2A departure area, to encounter extremely hassled passengers. Long lines mean baggage screening can take over 45 minutes.
8216;8216;If you have excess luggage, the airlines tears the tag they8217;ve stuck to your lock and you remove some stuff. What is stupid is I have to again join those long queues to screen my bags,8217;8217; says Anita Shah, heading for London.
A little ahead, a long line of 50 Gulf-bound passengers is seen before a single X-ray machine. 8216;8216;The other one is working but we will switch it on once the line becomes longer,8217;8217; says a baggage handler.
In this crazy mess, you suddenly spot the celebrity. Actor and singer Vasundhara Das pushes her trolley sleepily forward to catch her London flight. 8216;8216;Our Mumbai airport is ugly and unfriendly. Foreigners visiting India will freak out at this depressing sight,8217;8217; she says.
Yup, a freak show it is.
Arrival
AT the baggage area of Terminal 2C, an Air India flight from London arrived an hour ago. But the passengers are still waiting at the conveyor belt for their suitcases.
8216;8216;This is the world8217;s worst airport. I am a business class passenger and I have been waiting for the past half hour for my luggage,8217;8217; thunders Shravan Shroff, owner of multiplexes like Fame Adlabs in Mumbai and looking thoroughly exasperated.
8216;8216;Go check the immigration area. It8217;s a mess. Everyone rushes to the few counters that are open,8217;8217; he goes on.
The immigration counter in Terminal 2A is actually empty when we get there. It8217;s still waiting for the next flight to arrive. Consequently, immigration officials are seen snoring with their legs up against their cubicle walls, which are painted in an atrociously unaesthetic blue.
Those awake look suspiciously at The Sunday Express team. At least four of them question the accompanying AAI official several times: 8216;8216;Why on earth is the press here?8217;8217;
As soon as you come out of Terminal 2C, you wonder if you are at the airport floor or a bus station. Men, women, children, beggars and passengers sprawl on the airport pathways, without any consideration for others. The marble slabs lining the airport8217;s outer walls are neither similar nor matching. This is PWD decor at its best.
At the exit, one information counter has at least three curious onlookers, peeping through the window looking at the lady inside. She8217;s playing a computer game called Solitaire at her work station. At the tourism counters are decrepit, yellow-stained photographs advertising 8216;8216;Incredible India8217;8217;, stuck amateurishly with brown adhesive tape.
Visitors here to pick family or friends who have flown in can watch television only at the risk of getting a stiff neck. That8217;s because the giant flat TV set is not placed in front but to the right of the visitor section.
The only sign of efficiency is at the pre-paid taxi stand. Passengers don8217;t have to fight and bargain, Mumnbai airport is eager to get you out of its sight.
Airport director Sudhir Kumar agrees India8217;s 8216;8216;best airport8217;8217; 8212; it handles 88 international flights a day 8212; needs improvement, despite its ISO 9001 certification. He blames the architect. 8216;8216;It is the structural design of the building that makes it so claustrophobic and unfriendly,8217;8217; he says, 8216;8216;infrastructure needs to definitely improve.8217;8217;
8216;8216;But don8217;t blame AAI for everything. We are not responsible for X-ray machines, baggage or immigration delays and the snack bar services,8217;8217; clarifies Kumar.
At Mumbai8217;s airport, even blame travels on a conveyor belt!
Kochi8217;s miracle flight
Private airport, public benefit
TWO years after it became operational in 1999, the Kochi International Airport confronted its first crisis. As India8217;s only airport built and run by a private company it was earning enough to cover operating costs, but not to service debt or pay dividends.
The airport had been built in under five years and its project cost, Rs 315 crore, was low compared to similar airports. Some 10,000 shareholders 8212; mainly non-resident Keralites from 29 countries 8212; had invested Rs 85 crore. Term loans amounted to Rs 218 crore and the balance was made up by interest-free security deposits from various airport service providers.
But by 2001 Cochin International Airport Limited CIAL had begun defaulting on loans. C.V. Jacob, CIAL director and designated troubleshooter, recalls those days, 8216;8216;Had the government been in control they would have taken recourse to regulations and used extraneous methods. We could not. Investors had to share the risk, it just could not be passed on to the taxpayer.8217;8217;
Under the old public-service model, an airport8217;s job was simply to get planes in and out, move passengers and cover costs. And not all costs, of course, were measured by real-world accounting. By contrast, CIAL had to meet customer needs, cover costs, pay taxes, and make a return on capital investment.
8216;8216;There are limits to the usual avenues of revenue generation like landing and parking fees, for they are prescribed by the Civil Aviation Ministry. We had to look elsewhere,8217;8217; says R. Venkateswaran, CIAL8217;s company secretary.
CIAL introduced a user fee of Rs 500 for each international traveller. 8216;8216;This created misgivings initially. But the airport8217;s customers were to eventually wisen up to the reality that facilities don8217;t come free. Especially when you want facilities that are exceptional,8217;8217; says Venkateswaran.
Three years after that crisis, CIAL is actually pre-paying loans and aims to clear all debt by 2006. In 2003-04 it made a post-tax profit of Rs 22 crore, on a turnover of Rs 85 crore.
The airport encompasses 1,200 verdant acres, truly making it a 8216;8216;greenfield8217;8217; airport. Some 400 acres are lying unused. CIAL plans to build a tourist township here, complete with a golf course, an amusement park, the works, to tap into Kerala8217;s booming tourist market. That should help the bottomline.
The airport itself is growing. Floor space of the international terminal is being doubled to 150,000 square feet. The entire airport was conceived on a modular basis to enable expansion. Additional facilities are being built to handle 200 aircraft a week, up from the current 170.
The only complaint has been ground-handling. Jacob doesn8217;t mince words, 8216;8216;It was an oversight on our part. We should have taken it up ourselves and not entrusted it to a bureaucratic entity like Air-India.8217;8217;
That8217;s hint enough, if any were needed, of where the future of Indian airports lies.
