Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
NEW METRO AIRPORTS
Private Profit, Public Chaos
Raghu
EVERYTHING in infrastructure or services in India these days has to be “world class”. And according to liberalisers in government and outside, especially in the media, this must mean owned and run by the private sector preferably with foreign collaboration. The now familiar argument is that the state sector, again by definition, is incapable and that foreign partners will bring in much-needed capital and, more importantly, the “latest” in advanced technologies and management, while the consumer would be king in this “open” environment. Undeterred by experiences of the Enron fiasco or privatisation of electricity distribution, which clearly showed that private monopolies are in fact the anti-thesis of cost-efficiency and consumer friendliness, the UPA government adopted the very same approach to modernisation of India’s airports beginning with the metros. And once again, arguments against this course advanced by numerous expert commentators, progressive sections, trade unions and even the public sector Airports Authority of India (AAI), were brushed aside.
The results are there for all to see, whether it is greenfield airports as in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, or upgraded airports in Delhi and Mumbai. Having been given a completely free run, with no oversight or regulation, the private operators and their foreign collaborators have developed under-capacity infrastructure, pushed up costs to both airlines and passengers, caused enormous chaos and public inconvenience, and have cut many corners for the sake of short-term profit. Since the government has chosen a particular and rather rare model of privatisation (from the many others available internationally) in which the operators in effect have clear ownership and full management of the airports, the necessary linkages with related urban planning and infrastructure have also been absent leading to poor connectivity and city-side services, and more chaos all round.
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