K Ram Mohan Naidu: TDP's sole face in the Cabinet is known for his promises

At 36, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu has a lot of responsibilities. He is now the sole Cabinet minister from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and, almost certainly, the youngest civil aviation minister India has had. He is national general secretary of the TDP and has won the Srikakulam Lok Sabha seat for the third time in the elections just past. Mr Naidu has to work twice as hard now, having set the bar so high.

Among his ministerial tasks are to ensure that domestic air fares do not balloon, push the agenda of “Make in India” in domestic aviation, ensure new airports come up, push the divestment of existing airports, drive the impetus given by the finance ministry to the maintenance, repair and overhaul sector and at the same time push states to bring down taxes on aviation turbine fuel, which is the biggest cost factor in the operations of airlines in India.

The challenges are formidable but Mr Naidu is getting there. The Aircraft Act, which regulates civil aviation, was drafted in 1934. Since then, there have been at least 21 amendments to it. Mr Naidu has not touched those, but has renamed the new law the Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak with significant “Make in India” elements. Experts say the new Bill could have been a bit more futuristic. It could have included features on how to protect the environment, given that India is seen as a bad boy on climate change and many consider aviation the single-biggest polluter. This could have burnished the sheen on India’s climate-change credentials. Besides, there is no mention of how to go about producing civil aircraft in India. The problem here is that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) refers everything related to aircraft production to the US Federal Aviation Administration. The Bill falls short of setting India’s own benchmarks in this field.

He is a minister hard to dislike. During the last session of Parliament, he answered questions about the possibility of building a civilian airport in Kargil with empathy and understanding, although he erred on a detail. He said the terrain made it challenging to expand facilities in the existing airport in Kargil “which is a defence airport”. The independent member of Parliament (MP) from Ladakh, Haji Mohammed Hanifa Jan, corrected him, explaining that it was a civilian airport given on lease to the defence forces. The minister reworded his reply swiftly, explaining that it was an Airports Authority of India (AAI) airport given to the defence for security purposes. But given that “defence” is a sensitive word in that part of the country, the slip was noticed. Still, his acknowledgement that it was the responsibility of the Indian state to ensure Kargil and Ladakh did not remain cut off from the rest of the country five months in a year simply because the terrain was challenging communicated earnest sincerity.

Much of his background is known. Having lost his father, K Yerran Naidu, TDP MP and Cabinet minister in 1996, in a road accident in 2012, Ram Mohan returned home from Singapore, where he had been working, and contested the Srikakulam seat in 2014, when he was just 26. He has not lost a Lok Sabha election since. He is an electronics engineer from Purdue with an MBA from Long Island University. Living and working abroad has shaped some of his thinking. Issues of shoddy infrastructure — like the roof collapse of Delhi’s T1 airport in June this year, or the Jabalpur airport canopy fall, or the Rajkot canopy collapse — have surfaced and his response has been to immediately constitute enquiry committees on structural defects in airports.

But there are bigger infrastructure issues. Airlines in India have together ordered more than 1,000 aircraft. But do airports have the capacity to accommodate these? One of his first actions was to inspect Bhogapuram airport in Andhra Pradesh. Bhogapuram will replace Vishakhapatnam, which is a naval airport with a civil enclave in which domestic airlines operate. Being a naval airport, the hours of operations for civilian domestic airlines are very limited while there is huge pentup demand. This invariably leads to high ticket prices. Bhogapuram is being developed by a fellow Telugu, G M Rao of the GMR group, who also belongs to Srikakulam.

But to say that his state is his only focus will be wrong. The Union Cabinet recently cleared proposals worth close to Rs 3,000 crore for airports in Bihar and West Bengal.

In the time that Mr Naidu has been in office the ministry has come up with guidelines for seaplane operations. Cynics may say this will benefit his state, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, but even Gujarat and Maharashtra will gain from this. De Havilland, a seaplane manufacturer from Canada, has said it sees India as a new market: Not just to sell planes but also source parts for the aircraft it manufactures.

Mr Naidu is a promising young spark in the Modi government. And while he is intelligent enough to steer clear of taking sides in corporate rivalry in his sector, his moves will be watched closely.