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The wheels have slowly but surely started turning for the privatization of Mumbai and Delhi airports. ABN Amro, KPMG and Ernst & Young have been finalized as the financial consultants for the process. I find this news most heartening and it promises to push the liberalization process to a new level. Every visitor, new or old is treated to a rude shock at the first point of contact when the sheer unprofessional treatment of the aesthetics and the functioning hits home and forms an immediate negative impression of India. I have always been shouting myself hoarse regarding the privatization of the airports above everything else during any economics (or political) discussion.
Airports tend to be the prime mover of regional economic development and generally cause a ripple effect by creating incentives for affiliated businesses to locate and flourish. Certain aspects of the process caught my eye. The airports will simply not be privatized in term of their administrative functionality but also redesigned to match the growing needs of an increasing frequent flyer. Although, form follows function tenet is upheld in most of the service-oriented structures, airports I think deserve a thought beyond mere functionalism. They are the image creators of the first-time visitor and do deserve better attention to their design elements.
Newly Industralized Countries (NIC) have understood this simple concept and have paid utmost attention to this oft-neglected element. Changi Airport, Singapore and Hong Kong International Airport are well known to embody the spirit and enthusiasm of the region in laying out the red carpet to even the most insignificant tourist. I remember a documentary on the Mumbai-based architect Hafeez -Half fees- Contractor narrating his frustrating experience wherein he had presented a supposedly better airport design at paltry fees of Rupees Three Lakh (Rs.0.3 million) to cover his paper and overhead costs to the Maharashtra government. But his design was not accepted because a fellow architect offered to do the job for a measly Rupees Fifty Thousand. Maybe I wouldn’t have backed the choice of Hafeez as an architect for Mumbai’s airport but I am not particularly happy of the ugly mass of concrete that is passed off as the airport of India’s commercial capital. Governments have to understand the impact of a good airport on the regional economy.
Atlanta’s airport, name-changing withstanding, is a prime example of being the catalyst of business to a nascent regional economy. Now Navi Mumbai (New Bombay) is slated to get its share of a spanking new airport to share the burden of a burgeoning Mumbai air traffic. The feasibility reports being submitted, my dad tells me that the government expects to begin flights in the summer of 2008. Incidentally this new airport will be a stone’s throw from my erstwhile dissertation site and on the outskirts of my hometown, promising a veritable economic boom in the region. I hope better sense prevails this time and aesthetics and function enjoy equal importance.
by Patrix | on Sunday, November 9th, 2003 at 1:19 pm | 
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