Bangalore Crumbling Part 5

BANGALORE CRUMBLING, PART-5
CEO in charge of building new airport is polite: Delay is in ‘unacceptable range’
Dharam rushes to Bosses in Delhi to explain; his hijacking city’s new airport is crippling tech boom


India Inc may be fuming, wringing its hands in despair, but Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh and a team of his top bureaucrats have landed in Delhi tonight to assure the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi that Bangalore is in their safe hands.

What they may gloss over in their presentation is how they have grounded the city’s new international airport.

Albert Brunner, CEO of Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), the international consortium waiting to build it, has told The Indian Express that the delay has cost his company Rs 50 crore—at least.

‘‘Besides the financial damage, there is damage to the credibility of our company and also the investment climate for infrastructure projects in India,’’ says Brunner, a civil engineer who oversaw the $1.5-bn (Rs 7,000 crore) expansion of Zurich Airport.

Brunner says he does not want to comment on the political image of the state government, but the delay is making the project less viable. Delays are not uncommon in such infrastructure projects, he is polite to add, but there is a crucial difference with the Bangalore project.


‘‘We always knew the reason for the delays (elsewhere),’’ says Brunner, preparing to renegotiate an engineering offer (with Siemens and L&T), which expired in September. ‘‘In the present case, we don’t know the reason for the delay.’’

No one really does, except Dharam Singh.

‘‘We will clear the airport this month,’’ Singh told The Indian Express in November. Of course, this is December and everyone’s waiting.

Singh’s government—after announcing that he would review the Rs 350-crore state support and 30-year lease agreements—has instead sidelined the Chairman of the Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), Infosys’s N R Narayana Murthy, who wrote to the PM about the new hurdles in October.

This is all happening at a time when Bangalore is apparently losing business simply because of its ramshackle airport—with two aerobridges when it should have at least 20.

‘‘I have been to 80 countries, but I have not seen any country—except maybe Nepal—where the airport is as bad as Bangalore,’’ Murthy told The Indian Express. ‘‘We need it urgently.’’

Murthy, appointed by former chief minister S M Krishna to oversee the project, has not been invited to meetings after Singh took over.

Meanwhile, Brunner indicates that the international consortium, spearheaded by German giant Siemens, is running out of patience.

‘‘Unfortunately, the file is still not cleared. We still hope that it will happen in the next few days,’’ says Brunner. ‘‘The shareholders have not fixed a deadline for the clearance of the pending agreements. However, they have repeatedly said that (their) patience is not unlimited.’’

The airport was cleared by the Centre in July, 11 years after the idea was floated, shot down several times and faced the embarrassment of two ‘‘official land ceremonies’’, one by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in January 2002, another by Krishna in January 2004.

‘‘The present government has only been there for six (eight) months,’’ says Brunner. ‘‘It is too early for any comments on the cooperation with the Karnataka government. However, the overall delay this project has suffered so far in an unacceptable range.’’

The project—coming up in Devanahalli, 25 km from the city—is meant to be India’s first state-of-the-art airport, a critical gateway to the world for India’s booming silicon homeland. The start date has been postponed six times since 2002.

HURDLES ON THE AIRPORT ROAD

• Even if the airport is cleared, it will require expert, fast planning to make sure it is useful.
• The road to its site in Devanahalli is being widened to just four lanes from a jammed two, but at a snail’s pace. Worse, land around the airport—vital for connecting it with a high-speed rail to the city—is being rapidly bought up.
• ‘‘Sooner or later, the new airport needs a rail link with the city,’’ admitted CEO Brunner. Though it’s not a part of the initial phase, he said, ‘‘it is vital to secure the land for the future rail link as early as possible ... within our site boundaries, the future rail link is part of the master plan.’’
• But it may already be too late. ‘‘There is a rush to grab land around Devanahalli by the rich and powerful,’’ said a highly-placed government official. ‘‘I don’t know if a rail link can ever come up.’’