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Infrastructure development must for India's growth Source: IANS. New Delhi, Mar 12: India needs sustained uniform infrastructure development to maintain steady meaningful growth despite its booming economy, said speakers at a seminar here. At a seminar on "Can We Bridge the Infrastructure Deficit?" at the final session of the India Today Conclave 2006 late on Saturday, the speakers - union ministers Dayanidhi Maran and Praful Patel and opposition leader Pramod Mahajan - agreed that though India is progressing, much more needs to be done in terms of infrastructure development to take the country ahead and make the developments more meaningful. --- --- --- --- --- --- Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel admitted that while the upgradation moves for Delhi and Mumbai airports was a positive step ahead, "but much still needs to be done as far as developing the country's overall aviation infrastructure is concerned". Stating that infrastructure developments had suffered a lot till just a few years back, Patel said "it is time now for joint ventures to speedily implement plans and we cannot depend on the government as it has no money to meet the kind of expenses required for development." Patel said an overall growth in aviation is essential as the current growth is only due to increase in frequency of flights. "There has not been much addition in terms of connectivity to cities," Patel admitted, adding that things are being done to get the situation in order. --- --- --- --- --- --- ================== Reliance on joint ventures is OK provided it is made clear to the partners from the outset that they cannot ask for civil enclaves (like Dabolim) to be shut down to capture traffic at new airports (like Mopa). They must be prepared to share traffic for the long haul so that both facilities survive and one does not put the other out of business. If private parties are not prepared to do this then the government must be willing to put up money from its reserves in AAI etc in such cases. It must also give thought to surface transport connectivity to new airports simultaneously as per international practice. As regards the comment about "addition of connectivity to cities", what is Patel's own panel on military control at airports doing since Oct 2005 when it was established? It has to expedite its work to relax controls at economically vital destinations such as Pune, Goa, etc given the explosive growth in flight frequencies. As a post script, the clauses in the agreements for BIAL and HIAL have to be revoked to allow the civil enclaves to continue to function after the new airports are commissioned instead of reverting them to Defence to be used as super civil enclaves for VVIPs. Also we need to know why the slot control regimes at Hyderabad and Bangalore seem much more flexible than that at Dabolim. The latter needs to be relaxed forthwith to the levels of the former. Click here for More Stories More on News Top Search Keywords Bird flu Jessica Lal case Bush's India visit Indo-US nuke deal Amar Singh Nagpur Cricket Test Best Bakery case Sabrina Lal Filmfare awards Rani Mukherjee Amitabh Bachchan Taxi No. 9211 Search and Find More Stories - Day 4: Jumbo puts India on top -12/03/2006 18:40:10 IST - India-Oman set up defence panel -12/03/2006 17:00:50 IST - Infrastructure development must for India's growth -12/03/2006 16:57:43 IST - Every creative man is like software: Razdan -12/03/2006 15:44:37 IST
