Ring them bells for the airport song

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">Holy cow! <br />They are going to break ground and start constructing the perimeter wall of the eagerly-awaited Devanahalli International Airport on Friday.<br />Defence Minister George Fernandes will be there in his crumpled clothes. Along with the nattily attired Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain.<br />To hell with young IAF pilots dying in obsolete MIGs.Or passengers risking their lives in Alliance Air flying coffins.<br />No netas, no ceremony. Capiche?<br />For three decades we have waited patiently while nearly a dozen chief ministers have played ping-pong with the city''s future.<br />The Tata consortium would have completed construction by now had the Centre not forced Ratan Tata to withdraw because he isn''t in the habit of paying huge bribes to aviation ministers.<br />Okay, okay, there''s a new consortium in place and for a change the Centre is in agreement with the state about the urgency of building an international airport in the Knowledge Capital of India.<br />But compound walls do not an airport make.<br />For even though the Siemens Ventures-Larsen & Toubro-Zurich Airport consortium is raring to go, the concessions agreement has still to be hammered out. And the financial closure scheduled for March 2003 shows all signs of running into bad weather, unless a miracle propels the amendment to the Airports Authority of India Act in December.<br />Let''s imagine everything goes smoothly and the spanking new airport is ready by October 2006, there will be havoc over what to name it.<br />Deve Gowda Airport? Dr Rajkumar Airport? Tipu Sultan Airport? Rani Kittur Chinnamma Airport?<br />Will the customs men in their white uniforms turn honest? Right now they harass everybody at the HAL Airport. "Give me dollars... Give me that Scotch bottle...Give me that perfume.'''' Hell''s bells, it''s time Lokayukta Venkatachala spent some time at the airport and caught some of these blokes.<br />Will Indian Airlines and Air India be around in 2006 to fly from the new airport? Difficult to predict. Hopefully, the aunties and uncles pushing trolleys in the aisles will be replaced by their granddaughters and grandsons and we can still wave the tri-colour on arrival in London or New York or Dubai and declare that the maharaja serves well in the new millennium.<br />And yes, forget travelling on the Bellary Road once construction begins. Sandwiched between the grade separator construction that''s creating havoc near Hebbal Lake, the traffic flow chaos between Jakkur and Yelahanka and the narrow, pot-holed road to Devanahalli, it''s going to be a nightmare for residents and travellers in the area for the next couple of years.<br />Will the airport beat Singapore''s Changi in terms of facilities? It better. Otherwise it will be a colossal loss of precious resources. For if Bangalore is not turned into a hub like Frankfurt, then we might as well stick to HAL.<br />It''s closer.<br />And we are familiar with its mosquitoes, its stinking toilets, it''s discourteous staff and its money-grabbing customs personnel.<br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">allenmendonca1@indiatimes.com</span> </div> </div>