It is a sad good bye to HAL Airport in Bangalore and an unenthusiastic welcome to the new airport at Devanahalli which will be opened for commercial operations from today. However the last word has not been said as the matter of closure of the old airport is pending before the Karnataka High Court.

The Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), the consortium which has built the new airport ( which is yet to be given a name) and the Union Civil Aviation ministry in particular are flying against popular opinion stating that nothing could be done at this stage. They have ignored the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture which had unanimously recommended in March 2008 that the old airports in both Bangalore and Hyderabad be retained.
 
Even the simplest of minds would at once say that the Devanahalli airport is difficult to reach from most parts of Bangalore, which is bursting at its seams. The latter is 40 km. away from the Vidhana Soudha or the City centre whereas HAL is only nine km. away. That explains the advantage of retaining HAL. Its closure has come as a damper for those flying for short distances like those to Mangalore, Hubli, Belgaum, Chennai or Hyderabad. Even when conditions are ideal (that is without those notorious traffic jams) it would take not less than an hour and a half to reach Devanahalli from most parts of the City. Moreover even the short haul passengers are required to pay a hefty user fee at the Devanahalli airport.

The agreement entered into with the BIAL regarding the construction of the new airport falls into a pattern. That is the State or the Union Government sacrificing or bartering the interests of the people at large before the investors, foreign or Indian and agreeing to restrictive clauses. In the airport negotiations, it was the thoughtless agreement on part of the two governments to agree to the closure of the HAL airport. It is no wonder that the public spirited former judge of the Karnataka High Court, M.F.Saldanha has demanded a judicial inquiry to identify those responsible for the agreement signed with the BIAL.

A similar surrender of public interest is to be seen in the agreement over the construction of the so called Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure corridor. It is of interest that it is H.D.Deve Gowda, who now fumes over the corridor project who signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with an American consortium for the expressway project. That was in 1995 when he was the chief minister of the State. He did not foresee that thousands of acres of agricultural land would be destroyed to build the expressway and more than that for the five townships. The actual requirement of land for the expressway is only 1500 acres. But the company executing the project, the Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) has been allotted over 21,000 acres of land, most of which will form the townships.

The Janata Dal (Secular) has mentioned its opposition to the NICE project in its campaign for the current Assembly elections. The Party has been saying that its opposition is to the builder's claim over 2,000 acres of land near Bangalore. The lesson to be learnt from the NICE project is that there is a shortage of agricultural land considering our big population and requirements of food for the people and fodder for the cattle.
Both the Devanahalli and the NICE projects cannot be discussed without invoking the name of H.D.Deve Gowda. Devanahalli was never the only choice for the new airport. When he was the chief minister (1994-96), Gowda had mooted the idea of locating the new airport at Bidadi in Bangalore Rural District and to the south of Bangalore. Even the site for the airport had been selected and the Government had banned construction activity around the proposed site.

It is not as if protests over the Devanahalli airport were not aired earlier. The first protest was over the large extent of land acquired for it, over 5,000 acres. The former minister H.N.Nanje Gowda and the former Secretary to the Legislature T.Venkataswamy had even approached the Supreme Court arguing that 2,000 acres of land would suffice. But the Court dismissed their petition. Top scientists and experts on aviation had expressed their misgivings over the Devanahalli site. They had mentioned its closeness to some air force stations as a point against it.

It is being said that unlike in the western countries, the automobile boom arrived in our country before the roads were laid or broadened. In Nazi Germany, it was the autobahns first and then the people's car-the Volkswagen. Who says that whatever Adolf Hitler did in Germany was bad?  In India, though the Maruti 800 hit the roads in 1983 and countless new cars and models have arrived, the roads remain what they were. We may import cars or their engines but not the roads, be it remembered. No doubt the NDA government has to claim the credit for the Golden Quadrilateral road network project. Now the Tata's Nano is round the corner .Those who selected the Devanahalli site for the new airport, hardly considered the vital issue of connectivity to Bangalore. It was perhaps in the last two years that serious attention was given to provide the road or even rail linkage to the new airport. But the actual work began only three months ago and is still incomplete. Today when the aircraft takes off from the new airport, the connecting roads will be still under construction, improvement or expansion.

The one road which is being readied to carry both passengers and freight to the new airport is the Sankey Road running through some of the prestigious areas of Bangalore. The character of the road has already been destroyed with the construction of subways and flyovers. Those who care for Bangalore are aghast that over 800 trees along the Sankey Road and the Bellary Road have been felled to widen the link to the airport. A flyover has been proposed even on the road adjacent to the Raj Bhavan. What is virtually an expressway to the new airport will begin close to the Governor's residence. What is also alarming is the move to build a railway station on the Mahatma Gandhi Road to provide a rail link to the new airport. The earlier proposal was to build the expressway to the airport at a point beyond the Hebbal flyover on the Bellary Road and to provide the rail connection from the Bangalore Cantonment railway station. Both would have been better propositions than what has been decided upon now.

To close down the HAL Airport is to lay waste the infrastructure that has been provided there. Its history is interlinked with that of civil aviation in the State. Princely Mysore had a civil aviation department although there was only one aircraft that belonged to the Maharaja of Mysore! The Hindustan Aeronautics (earlier called Hindustan Aircraft) project was conceived by those two farsighted builders of Mysore and India Sir M.Visvesvaraya and Sir Mirza Ismail. It was thought of to build automobiles (Austin cars to be precise). The British opposed it and the Second World War intervened. The car project was turned into an aircraft servicing centre. It was the industrialist Walchand Hirachand who executed the HAL project. American engineers and Air Force officers gave the initial push to the aircraft project. The airport came to be developed later.