Today's HERALD (front page, box): "Churchill takes on CM over Mopa talk". This worthy is supposedly on some Defence Committee and has supposedly been raising the issue of the Navy's shift from Dabolim to Seabird for at least the past one year. Obviously no one is listening to him in Delhi or else he would have been able to update us on the thinking regarding the shift now and/or in the future? What is the point of saying that it is for the state government to effect the shift? The state government which is led by his own political party is not even discussing the issue with the military (at least not in the public space)!
Mopa has been in the air for nearly a decade. How can Alemao now object to this idea? Sure, there are rules for the separation of two international airports. Why is this not made the basis for pushing for a purely domestic airport for Mopa on an evolutionary basis? The need of the hour is to expedite a shift of military flight training out of Dabolim to Seabird so that civilian flight restrictions can be lifted completely and Dabolim can grow to its full economic potential. Mopa needs to come on stream in a small scale and evolutionary way and not as an international A380 airport with two runways overnight . This way the threat of closure of civilian flights at Dabolim can be obviated. But this goes against the grain of civil aviation airport policy where greenfield airports are seen as the knee jerk solution to conflicts with the military at economically vital facilities like Dabolim. Our energy has to be focused on changing this policy and not spinning wheels unnecessarily and perpetually. The issue is complicated, it needs to be disaggregated properly, solutions have to be developed step by step to reach the overall aim of adequately and consistently serving the populace of Goa by air travel and tourism in this day and age.
