Ageing infrastructure, long planning delays and serious capacity contraints: all major problems affecting the Indian economy, and typified by the debacle facing its major airports. Bloomberg's Andy Mukherjee writes that India's Airport Debates Thwart Needed Upgrades:
Just when it looked like India had found a way to modernize its decrepit airports, squeamish bureaucrats and stubborn politicians discovered new tactics to derail the plan.
It was clear to policy makers that privatization was inevitable when India resolved, more than eight years ago, to upgrade the state-run airports so aptly described as "a disaster'' by Hong Kong investor Marc Faber.
"Looking at the quantum of investment required,'' the Indian government's 1997 policy on airport modernization said, "the answer to all the problems lies in the infusion of private -- including foreign -- investment in this sector."
Announcing a pragmatic policy was the easy part; trying to implement it has been a nightmare. After several false starts and midcourse corrections, India is still waiting for politicians and officials to end their debates and hand over management of two of the country's busiest airports -- Mumbai and New Delhi -- to private bidders so they can invest the $3.5 billion required to revamp them.
The transactions, which were initially expected to be completed by May 2004, missed yet another deadline last week because of bureaucratic overkill.
Meanwhile in Bangalore, Unique Zurich Airport AG recently began constructing a new, privately owned airfield. The Bangalore airport will be ready in 2008 -- a full 17 years after Unique, which operates Switzerland's busiest airfield, made its first construction application.
The inordinate delays are becoming unaffordable. The undercapitalized Mumbai and New Delhi airports are fast reaching a point where they will simply stop functioning, choked by traffic that is growing 20 percent a year...
While India is deficient in almost all natural resources, there is one commodity which India has an abundance of, corruption. This crippling attribute is responsible for the pathetic state of India's infrastructure. India will never become a developed nation. It will forever be a cesspool of filth, fraud, and disease.
Posted by: Indian28 | Friday, June 29, 2007 at 02:18 AM