Aranmula and Nedumbassery – A Case of Double Standards

Kerala’s mortal aversion to privately funded capital is notorious. I have myself posted some notes in this blog earlier, highlighting issues like Endosulfan – Who is the real culprit in Kerala?, KSFE – State-sponsored daylight robbery, and National pastime - Strikes. So, this is not another attempt to expose this mindset which is sapping the entrepreneurial vitality of the state from within, like a cancer. What caught me as another striking example of this double standard is the recent issue with the proposed airport at Aranmula in Southern Kerala.

KGS Group, a Chennai-based industrial house with infrastructural and engineering expertise has proposed an international airport at Aranmula with state of the art facilities. The three promoters of the group, Shri K Kumaran, Gigi George and P V Shanmugam, whose first letters of their names forms the title of the group are technocracts and a chartered accountant. Reliance ADA Group led by Anil Ambani has a 15% stake in KGS. Out of the 700 acres of land estimated for the project, 240 acres have been acquired by the company until it fell into a quagmire created by some politicians and environmentalists. The 2000-crore rupee project was scheduled to be commissioned by December 2014, but all work is stalled at present. The bone of contention is that most of the earmarked area is agricultural land. Though nobody denies that many of the small plots are not cultivated at all, it doesn’t prevent them from raising a hue and cry about converting paddy fields for industrial use.

Now, go back twenty years in time to 1993, when the idea of a greenfield airport at Kochi first germinated in the mind of a young, talented IAS officer who was also the District Collector of Ernakulam. Shri. V J Kurian, who matches in caliber his namesake Varghese Kurian of Amul, proposed Nedumbassery as the site of a new airport as the existing naval airstrip at Willingdon Island was proving a bottleneck to the city’s growth as a metropolis. He acquired 1300 acres of prime agricultural land at Nedumbassery and within three years built a superb airport, the first in India employing private-public partnership (PPP) model. In a deal finely balancing incentives with coercion, Kurian worked a miracle in Nedumbassery’s fertile brown soil, by resettling 2300 landowners and 872 families amicably by Kerala standards. The government has only 33.36% of the stake, but controls the management and the airport functions effectively as a public sector undertaking (PSU). The project hadn’t had to face such severe opposition as KGS is experiencing at Aranmula precisely because it was a government-controlled entity.

Now, come back to the present again. This time we go to Amballur, near Piravom in Ernakulam district where an Electronics and Hardware Park is envisaged by the state-run KSIDC over 390 acres of agricultural land. Surprisingly, there is no agitation, no protest and no legal tussles over converting agricultural land! In fact, the cabinet has exempted the land from the purview of Kerala Conservation of Paddy Fields and Wet Lands Act, thereby smoothing the way for earthmoving equipment to quickly level the paddy fields for construction work to start.

Why this unashamed double standard? What makes Aranmula different from Nedumbassery or Amballur? Is it because a private company is involved in the project? If the project is not economically viable, let KGS face the consequences as it is their money. When will our stupid brethren realise that private enterprises are also the bread winners of the nation?