"Cong-JD (S) regime is deliberately targeting Bangalore"

Grounded plans
Bangalore needs an international airport as of yesterday. So why this dithering?
Shekhar Gupta, Editor, The Indian Express

This week Congress President Sonia Gandhi has been criss-crossing Maharashtra, offering incumbency — in the state and at the Centre — as a key factor that voters should consider before their cast their ballots on October 13. It is an interesting melange of pros and cons. But her party may like to look just beyond Maharashtra’s borders to realise that incumbency is not always a guarantee against the most baffling of reversals. Karnataka, till the assembly elections this spring, had a Congress government. In the state and Central elections it found success, and now a Congress-led alliance is in place in both Bangalore and New Delhi. For those desirous of seeing the state capital optimise its potential as a hub in the services sector, this political harmony would appear to be just the magic ingredient to finally get the city an airport commensurate with its ambitions. Instead, the Dharam Singh government has decided to stall key agreements signed by his predecessor, S.M. Krishna, this February. Hopes of seeing work on the Bangalore International Airport commence at last have been grounded once again — that, too, for no sensible reason.

By initiating a review of the land lease and state support agreements, Chief Minister Dharam Singh has given an alarming account of his government’s priorities. For one, by stalling progress in the airport project, he has confirmed fears that the Congress-Janata Dal (S) regime is deliberately targeting Bangalore. In the wreckage of Chandrababu Naidu’s electoral experience and in a perceived ego clash with Krishna, his government seems to have found reason to distance itself from Bangalore and its concentration of information technology and BPO sectors. The perfectly sensible need to address the agriculture sector is being inexplicably posited as being at variance with an enabling role in the services sector (most of it in and around Bangalore). This would make for daft politics and dangerous economics. The proposed airport on Bangalore’s outskirts is a key component in the infrastructural network required to sustain the city’s firms and its hinterland. For another, this frivolous attitude to previously signed agreements is bound to affect investor confidence.

By one estimate, Bangalore accounts for a third of India’s software exports. Certainly, with the presence of companies like Infosys and Wipro, it has led the BPO boom in the country. Now, these very firms are said to be having second thoughts about concentrating their resources in Bangalore, with its fraying infrastructure and poor air and road connectivity. For the mindset that rattles them, one needs to just see Dharam Singh’s actions on the Rs 1,330 crore airport project.