The inauguration on Sunday of a new international airport in Goa, the second in the tiny state with a population of 18 lakh, testifies to the growing profile of modern Goa as also the steady rise of India’s aviation sector. Growing Goa, what was a cluster of 30 villages long ago, is an inspiring story that should also send the right signals to other states. Tourism and remittances from abroad give it the present strength. Curiously, the sea-side state that has a population of no more than 18 lakh already has a capacity to handle 85 lakh passengers annually at its Dabolim airport in South Goa, to which is added the Mopa international airport that will become operational from January 5 as a New Year/ Christmas gift to the state. The new airport will have a capacity to handle a crore of passengers a year when its facilities are fully operational. Two aspects are prominent in this context. Some six lakh Goans live and work abroad, a process partly boosted by the territory’s Portuguese links since the 16th Century. To this is added the massive growth of tourism. The result is the landing of as high as 70 flights there daily, a number that would rise to 250 flights a month hence.
India claims to be the fastest-growing civil aviation market – the number of its airports small and big going up from less than 75 in 2014 to 140 now and is projected to rise to 220 by 2024. The UDAN scheme will help in this endeavour. In the past seven years, the number of aircraft operational in India has gone up from 400 to over 700, and is growing by 100 more every year. The private sector would play a near-exclusive role also as the Tata group has taken over the hugely loss-making Air India. The greed and wrong steps of some ministers of the past famously undercut the growth of this sector. The flaws in the aviation policy as also the mismanagement and unwarranted meddling at ministerial level led to the collapse of newly sprouted aviation entities like King Fisher. The UPA period was a time when huge commissions/bribes were allegedly taken at the highest levels and foreign airlines got all the profitable sectors for operations on a platter. A regional party that handled the ministry bled the sector clean. Air India too took the worst hit. The national civil aviation policy of 2016 did some good. Fresh life was injected to the civil aviation segment after the exit of the UPA-II, but the Covid phase came as another dampener.
