Posted on 07/04/2010 12:42:10 PM PDT by NCjim
India inaugurated a multi-billion-dollar airport terminal in New Delhi on Saturday -- a shiny glass and steel symbol of the country's aspirations as an emerging global power
The state-of-the-art hub, which cost nearly three billion dollars and can handle 34 million passengers a year, was showcased at a special ceremony by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ahead of opening to the public later this month.
Built in just 37 months to coincide with New Delhi's hosting of the Commonwealth Games in October, the terminal sprawls over four square kilometres (1.5 square miles) and boasts 97 automated walkways and 78 aerobridges.
"This is a demonstration of what India is truly capable of," Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said at the inauguration ceremony at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, which was also attended by ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi.
The facility, on which nearly 40,000 workmen toiled at the height of construction, is India's third world-class airport after Hyderabad and Bangalore but dwarfs both.
"It's an advertisement of India's ability to create world-class infrastructure," economist D.H. Pai Panandiker, who heads the independent RPG Goenka Foundation in New Delhi, a private economic think-tank, told AFP.
As Asia's third-largest economy after China and Japan, India urgently needs to upgrade its dilapidated transport infrastructure, including ports and roads, which is seen as a major hurdle to accelerating economic expansion.
"Overcoming our infrastructure handicaps will remove some of the major handicaps to faster growth," said Panandiker.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Not mentioned here is that it was constructed by a private company, and hence the efficiency.
Do the holy cows wander around the runways?
Sort of ironic the former 3rd world in Asia has or is building first class infrastructure but the US is deteriorating to 3rd world.
The main thing India lacks in terms of competing with China is infrastructure. Focused investment is a bit easier in a police state like the PRC, but India offers a well educated English speaking educated class, a (not that well known to outsiders) large and growing middle class, and (largely because of GW Bush) a strong political and military friendship with the US. But their transportation infrastructure is appalling. Hopefully, having a real international airport in the capitol is a sign of things to come. But as things stand now they have a lot of catching up to do vis a vis their chief competitor.
Two years ago (when I visited), the international terminal at the airport in Bombay was also undergoing major construction. I saw a lot of construction of multi-lane highways outside of Bombay, probably because private auto ownership is growing by leaps and bounds.
India and China had the largest economies in the world from 1000 BC thru 1600 AD.
They both will again regain that position in this century.
They were both slower in adopting industrialization and thus were over taken by western countries and Japan. Now that they have acquired state of the art technical know how, there is no way to stop them unless they go back to socialism.
They have all of our money because the FREE TRADERS.
It’s good they are aware of the issue and trying to improve things. It is such an amazing country. Thought I was long past culture shock till my first day in one of the poorer sections of Mumbai. Then wham! Like being transported to a different planet.
It is.
Nice to see the dirty old airports being updated too -- have yet to see the new Benguluru airport, and now a new one in New Delhi.
not really. They haven’t got “our money”. They’ve earned it or they have their own money by improving their lot and gettting rid of socialism.
Google is not cooperating in picture searches for new New Delhi airport.
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