T N Ninan: PPP at work

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

I spent four hours yesterday, being shown around the different work sites at Delhi airport by people from GMR, the majority shareholder in the joint sector company that is rebuilding the airport in order to run it as a facility that belongs to the modern age. It was an instructive visit, in a dozen different ways. First, the good news: the Delhi International Airport Ltd, or Dial, will have a virtually new airport in place by the summer, two years after GMR won the airport bid, and barely a year after getting full possession of the 5,400 acres that belong to the airport. In stages between April and August, a completely new domestic departure terminal will be inaugurated along with its elevated approach road, as also a largely revamped international terminal, an expanded and remodelled domestic arrival terminal, and an upgraded second domestic departure terminal. Also completed will be a brand new runway, and a four-fold expansion of car parking space in the domestic terminal area. The airport will therefore be able to comfortably handle many more passengers, as against barely 22 million today (in facilities designed for handling 15 million). For all those suffering from the airport's history of chaos, this will be a huge relief.

Two years later, when an integrated international-cum-domestic terminal is ready (the building will cover more than 20 acres, and work at seven levels above and below ground), along with a metro link direct to the airport and hopefully some 3,000 rooms in about 30 new airport hotels (all this for the Commonwealth Games of 2010), Delhi will have an airport that can handle between 40 and 50 million passengers "" making it one of the 10 largest in the world. And it will have been built in barely half the time that it took Singapore to build Changi, or Thailand to build Suvarnabhumi, though Delhi will have more aerobridges (74, against nine today), more parking and more of almost anything you can think of. Delhi is not alone. The GVK group is doing similar work, though on a smaller scale, for the Mumbai airport, while the new airports at Hyderabad (also by GMR) and Bangalore will be inaugurated in March-April next year.

Visiting the Delhi site is instructive because the obvious question that asks itself is why the airport's previous public sector managers could not do what is being done today. From stories of missing maps, sewage systems and electricity lines that no one either knew existed or would own up to, a chaotic arrangement of legacy buildings, and many other hairy tales, you get to understand why so much of government-run infrastructure simply does not work and is a national embarrassment. A second lesson is that India has private enterprise that is creating effective organisations outside the glamour set lionised by the stock exchange "" though it is also true that the GMR group's value on the stock market has multiplied more than five-fold in barely a year. A third point that strikes home is that India has so many fruitless controversies before something useful gets done "" most people would have forgotten the endless drama over the Tata group's attempts to build a new Bangalore airport; even now, the Chennai and Kolkata airports may be losing out because they are being neither privatised nor given a comparable makeover.

All this is not to say that GMR's Dial project is above controversy. The company's bid to get around sharply escalated project costs and an unreal level of revenue-sharing with the Airports Authority of India, by using upfront deposits as a means of project funding without having to share the cash with anyone, is being too clever by half. That matter will be resolved with/by the government. Meanwhile, for the passengers who will use the airport, the news is all good.