Mumbai grounded

Even to the most distant,detached of observers,it must by now be clear that Mumbais airport just cannot handle the citys growing traffic. Pressure has built on the current airport,in Santa Cruz,for years; and the civil aviation ministry has warned,over and over again,that air traffic through Mumbai is quick approaching capacity for a single airport. And now comes news that,in fact,the airport is beginning to cut back. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told this newspaper that there will soon have to be a general ban on additional flights for turboprop jets in the private category. Even if there arent that many of us who travel in private turboprop aircraft regularly,enough people do visit major financial centres of the sort Mumbai wants to be,who use planes in that category. This is an unmistakeable signal that that long-warned-of saturation of the airport is finally at hand.

Indeed,Patel went on to say that without additional capacity,I can tell you that by the end of 2011 it will become very difficult for Mumbai to take more flights. For the business hub and largest port of a country trying for double-digit growth,that is more than troubling: it is close to being disastrous,and for the country as whole,not just Mumbai or Maharashtra. And what progress has been made,you might well ask,on expanding that capacity? Why is not another airport in the works? The answer,of course,is that the second airport,destined for Navi Mumbai,and planned almost as long as troubles at Santa Cruz have been foreseen,has been the victim of lazy,dilatory,license-raj environmentalism.

The environment ministry continues to insist that theres no rush,that we can sit around while endless impact reports are drafted on slack bureaucratic-academic schedules,all to save a couple of hundred acres of mangroves. But thats not all. The land in Navi Mumbai has been identified but the assumption now is that another 1200 contiguous hectares near Mumbai can also be found. This laughable condescension has,of course,been shot down by the environmental impact assessment report prepared by IIT Bombay,which says that the Navi Mumbai site is the most feasible and viable location for the second airport. But,in its continual search for cheap applause from the green galleries,the environment ministry has single-mindedly decided to wrap reams of red tape around the decision. Its time for someone to tell them to cut that tape,and cut the delay.