the Mopa Vimantal Pidit Xetkari Samiti (MVPXS), in a statement to the media, said that the villagers of Varconda, Casarvanem, Chandel, Amberem, Uguem and Mopa, whose land is being acquired by the government for the new airport, have rejected the offer of increased compensation. The samiti said that their members are not prepared to give up their land as the plateau needs to be protected from real estate speculators and other destructive forces so that it can be handed over to future generations in the condition it was received by the present generation.
The samiti, in its statement, has used strong language as it argues on the demerits of a new airport in general and in this location in particular. Besides stating that the land in question is a unique plateau that needs to be conserved, and stressing on the displacement of people living there that the airport will cause, the samiti calls the project ‘ill-advised and economically unfeasible’. It doesn’t stop at that. It terms the decision of building a ‘superfluous airport’ on the land as ‘arbitrary’ that is only for ‘short-term profits of a few from land speculation’ and asks that it be scrapped.
What the samiti has said in its latest release is a reiteration of what environmentalists and others have been saying over the past few years since the idea of a second airport at Mopa was first proposed. That the new airport will be economically unfeasible is a very real fear as the government continues to insist that commercial operations at the Dabolim airport will not be stopped once the Mopa airport is thrown open. In such a scenario, where two airports will exist in the State that has a population of 1.5 million, the government would be advised to conduct another study on the financial viability of the new airport proposed at Mopa.
If the government is not willing to take into consideration the environment concerns raised by the farmers of the area and also by environmentalists, then it has to look at the financial prospects of the airport. In the past two years the country has spent Rs 600 crore on 25 airports across the country but these airports have not handled any scheduled flights. Goa’s population, as pointed out, is small. If the government expects Mopa airport to meet its passenger targets through tourism, it will have to re-evaluate its proposal. In a reply tabled in the Lok Sabha, in August, the Civil Aviation minister had listed 101 airports across the country as having made losses in the past three years. These included airports at Jaipur, Kajuraho, Tirupathi and Pondicherry, cities that are heavily dependent on tourism.
There is still no clarity on the traffic patterns expected at the proposed airport at Mopa. While it aims to handle millions of passengers once it is fully operational, there is ambiguity on where these passengers will come from or even where they will go after landing at Mopa.
The construction of an airport cannot be a political decision taken to please certain sections of a local community or in the hope that once an airport exists, airlines will begin flights to it. This has not happened in many other instances in the country. Constructing an airport should be a commercial and pragmatic decision, such as taken by a corporate body starting a new project, after proper viability studies and with revenue projections that show profits. In the absence of proper studies, there is cause to fear that Mopa and Dabolim as commercial airports will lead to two loss making airports in Goa, and that the State cannot afford.
