The breathtaking contrast in the airpsace controls used by President Bush's aircraft while in Delhi and those imposed by our own VVIPs including their military lackeys seem to provide an object lesson in democracy which we might do well to emulate at the earliest.
It seems the only requirement for Air Force One's safety and security was to space the use of Delhi's runway by a mere 10 minutes ahead of take-off or landing. This is in start contrast to the tendency to close down the runway for hours on end for Indian VVIPs/Defence operations and throw airline schedules completely out of gear for long periods). Air Force One landed from Kabul on Wednesday. It took-off for Hyderabad on Thursday, returning a number of hours later and then took-off for Islamabad the same night. TOI, March 5, in a report ttled " Air Force One gives flying lessons to Indian VVIPs" called it an example of a "minimally invasive" operation. Would our airspace controls over airports such as Dabolim qualify as "butchery"? Maybe what we are seeing is the contrast between "oldest democracy" (where public convenience is given topmost priority all the way down the line) and "largest democracy" (where public inconvenience is cheap).
