Will India give wings to its airport privatisation dream? Yawn!

The government - and when I say government, I don't know if this is just the bureaucrats of the aviation ministry or a wider set - is no longer sure it wants to go ahead with the privatisation of airports, rues Anjuli Bhargava.

As someone who has been covering the aviation sector for 20-odd years, I have to say that I largely expect to slip into age-old before the government - BJP, UPA or anyone for that matter - makes up its mind on whether it actually wants to privatise some of its public airports (in this case I refer to Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur and Ahmedabad).

Of course, I may add here, if Navi Mumbai is built before I retire, I will personally celebrate.

Wednesday's lead story in this paper said the Centre had now decided to drop the plan to privatise these four airports on the PPP model and that it would probably hand them to a private player to operate and maintain.

Since it seemed the government had actually taken some sort of final decision, I flew into a panic.

Final decision-making and that too from our government? It is alarming, as most of you would agree. Well, I decided to do some researching and here's what I found.

The terms of reference had not yet been changed - there is no final word - but there is definite evidence of a change of mind.

People in the know told me that it was on the cards. The airport privatisation plan was about to be dropped. Our story is correct.

The government - and when I say government, I don't know if this is just the bureaucrats of the aviation ministry or a wider set - is no longer sure it wants to go ahead with the privatisation of these four airports.

At least, not on a PPP basis. The plan was sort of on the back burner, just like many other plans.

Back burners have never been in short supply in India. So I asked why. It seems they lack either the will or the conviction to go ahead.

Further, the unions are protesting. The Airports Authority of India employees are protesting.

The bureaucracy doesn't want to lose it powers over the present airports. It has already lost four major ones in the past.

Private sector to their mind is primarily needed to pump in more capital.

But in these four, the previous government had already pumped in a large sum of money.

The airports stood and were functioning. They were not ideal but we are making do, aren't we? Why fix something that ain't quite broken?

There are so many broken things we are not trying to fix, as it is. I quickly contacted the bigwigs in the airport sector.

They yawned. They said they had other stuff, mostly problems, I suspect, on their plates. They didn't seem too excited with this development.

They sounded bored. No one expected it to flow smoothly anyway. Whatever did?

As one of the largest players - when I asked him if he was so disinterested that he wouldn't even bid - said, "We may have bid depending on the conditions. We were not focused on it as it was going back and forth."

And back and forth seems to be the story of India in more ways than one. Without straying too far, I will mention another recent statement by the Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma.

The ministry recently approved setting up of a second airport in the NCR region, the final location of which is not yet certain.

The proposal - another one to endlessly flip-flop - is to be put up before the Cabinet.

The honourable minister, quoted by newspapers, said: "We have decided to develop a second airport in the NCR as we want to reduce both pollution and air traffic at the Delhi airport".

Why he wants to reduce the air traffic at DIAL is anybody's guess. Do these ministers think before they speak?

Do they ever think after they have spoken? Or do they ever think at all. The lessons from all this: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And privatisation of these airports - if it ever happens - ain't happening in a rush.

Image is for representation purpose only.

Photograph: PTI