*Comments on The Konkan Packaging Company of Goa* >From original sin to miracles
Philip S. Thomas The queer B-schoolish title, "Konkan Packaging Company of Goa" evokes in a casual reader either the obscure Konkan Railway Corp or the Container Corp of India or, at a stretch, Honeymoon Travels (P) Ltd (the "hit film" from Bollywood). Actually the article seems to be about the parceling of Goa's scenic land - big time in recent years and, by implication, fraudulently-- for real estate development. The overly clever title itself is of a piece (a minor one) with the generally trivial or stereotyped press Goa gets in national media but that is another story. Be that as it may, my present purpose is to focus on the snide point buried by the author in the middle of his article in "shoot-and-scoot" fashion as follows: "No doubt a collection of historical and cultural curiosities have shaped popular ideas of Goa, and one of the dominant ideas currently is that of Goa being easily consumable. What is to blame? Certainly some of the factors include the air travel boom in India (Goa's Dabolim airport is amongst the 10 busiest in the country) which has helped turn Goa into a weekend agenda for part-time residents and annual holidaymakers." Among the historical and cultural legacies about "ideas of Goa" is the one of "The Rome of the East". Given this, it is surprising that the author has not resorted to the concept of "original sin" in the chronic Goan game of apportioning blame for the existing sorry state of affairs. If he had done so he would well have concluded that the handing over of a civilian airport to the military (specifically the Indian Navy) after Liberation in Dec 1961 is the prime source from which a lot of Goa's governance troubles may have flowed, albeit unintentionally. No doubt there is an air travel boom in the country with the dawning of the 21st century and no doubt Goa's beaches, woods and rivers are a big attraction for Indian and foreign tourists. In the opposite direction, locals like Goswami are benefiting from increasing - relatively low fare and speedier - air connectivity to distant points in India like Assam (albeit via Hyderabad and Kolkata). But to baldly say that "Goa's airport is amongst the 10 busiest" belies the fact that it is steadily slipping in national aviation rankings and is even on the verge of being squeezed out of the Top Ten. This is because the runway has, no doubt, been steadily expanded over the years to a jumbo jet-friendly one about 10,000 feet long. But the aircraft parking and passenger terminal spaces have not kept pace, due to the stranglehold of the military and the myopia and/or inertia of the state and central governments. Furthermore, airline landing slots were largely confined to the non-peak afternoon hours since the peak morning slots were blocked for "military flight training" - by aircraft designed to operate from 700 foot decks of aircraft carriers. The resulting congestion evokes "Heathrow" in some imaginative people's minds. And the loss of half the Navy 's strike aircraft purely to routine sorties doesn't help the base's reputation as a premier training centre. The "original sin" was compounded (perhaps without compunction this time) in the 1990s when the Indian Navy began a massive project, called Seabird, 100 km to the south at Karwar where its next aircraft carrier is to be based. But there is no priority to build an air station there to which the training flights can be transferred from Dabolim to release the slots for scheduled airline use. Instead the Navy is backing the civil aviation ministry's plan to build a futuristic new PPP airport at the extreme northern tip of Goa since it will result in the mandatory closure of the Dabolim civil enclave (and reversion to the military in full). This will be a tragic replay of the severe cost and access problems currently looming at Bangalore and Hyderabad for air travelers at their farcical airport "non-systems". In this difficult situation the Goa government has opted for a two-airport solution that has been approved "in principle" by the ICAO itself (that too on second thoughts and after some politically threatening agitation in Goa which barely predated - in 2005/06 -- the ones the author has focused on). But its materialization and sustainability over the next few decades will, in itself, be a minor "miracle", to use common sense and a common local theological expression. To cut a long story short, how is governance in a small, scenic and secluded state to be efficaciously carried out when an obdurate military is ensconced in the airport on undiscussable "security" grounds and marches to the beat of a different drum? Airports, after all, are the commanding heights of modern socio-political economies especially those like Goa's which are based on tourism. The author's flippant remark in the core of his article betrays surprising ignorance of the complexity of the fundamental factors at work or constitutes a mental block for some unknown reason. His account is only the proverbial tip of an insidious iceberg that the Goa government has to deal with (viz coping through urban planning with the time warp of ancient communidade thinking in an era of a runaway real estate boom), preferably in collaboration with well-wishers, but alone if necessary.
