We shall only fly!

Yesterday I was listening to this MP from Kerala supporting the Airport at Aranmula. Actually I have nothing against Airports and if it comes to Aranmula it would be easier to catch a flight but are Airports the number one priority for Kerala?

As per this author..

CHENNAI: In Kerala, they have their heads in the clouds and eyes on non-residents. A fifth international airport—and India's first wholly private one—is coming up in a state where no highway is more than half as wide as the National Highways Authority of India's standard minimum of 60 metres.

 No other state in the country has as many international airports. Tiny Kerala, where narrow roads are the norm due to lack of land, clearly bets its future on its vast army of non-resident Keralites whose remittances account for 31% of the state's GDP.

  Fittingly enough, the new airport is coming up at Aranmula in Pathanamthitta district, where a toy plane flown into a crowd could well hit a non-resident Indian.

 Anyway let me tell you how this MP, P. J. Kurien justified. He says that every traveller bound to Trivandrum or Cochin airports would be going in two cars! Now I dont know how he came up with this idea. Maybe he was thinking of the escort cars that accompany the ministers? In this case he wants us to imagine 100 travellers and hence 200 cars that commute daily to these airports and the pollution, the fuel consumption etc that this creates. We hear that around 700 acres of land is to be acquired for this airport and this may include paddy fields too.

"The area is a wetland, and a flood-plain region for the seasonal flooding of the Pampa river, and there are paddy fields, too," said NK Sukumaran Nair, general secretary of Pampa Parirakshana Samithy, an environmental organisation leading the agitation against the project.

But our MP asserts that environment would be much better off without these cars on the road. What an idea sirji!

Sometimes I hate myself and it is when these people evoke the same feelings of those who bombed our parliament.

These MP's and their cronies must have already acquired a sizeable property within this area and must be now waiting to book their profit as usual. 

I also read that Reliance holds 15% stake in the company that is going to develop this Airport.

KGS Developers, in which Anil Ambani's Reliance Capital and Reliance Infra hold a 15% stake, expects the first flight to land at Aranmula in less than two years.

If they are really depending on the Gulf NRI's to bring in the traffic then it is good to note that within a span of 20 years, Saudi is ging to be a major oil importer mainly since they guzzle more gas internally and since their oil reserves are running dry. This holds true for other Gulf countries too.

"Our analysis shows that if nothing changes Saudi may have no available oil for export by 2030," said the report, adding that it ran the risk of becoming oil importer.

The country already consumes all its gas production, 9.6 billion cubic feet (ft3) per day of natural gas, all of which is entirely consumed domestically.  

 
And at the rate Kerala is emerging, very soon it shall turn into a concrete jungle. Which tourist would then want to visit Kerala? Even my retirement plans shall go up in smoke in case I live that long! We would only be retiring to another desert. 

I am starting to hate all those who send these idiots to the parliament. It would be only appropriate to copy this tweet;

Define INDIA: A place where the Cartoonist is in jail, and the Cartoons are in Parliament.

Justice will be done.

When this comes from the President of the United States of America, we believe it. Obama stated this in response to the brutal killing of the US ambassador to Libya yesterday. 

Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday to hunt down the killers of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans during an assault on its mission in Benghazi as suspicion grew that the diplomat was the victim of an organised attack by an Islamist group.

Yes, they will avenge the killing for sure. But if I am to shift this scenario to India my mind refuses to conjure such an image. Can you imagine MM Singh uttering such words and even if he ever utters them will you believe him? We are yet to punish Kasab. We don’t have even have any clue of the Indians who helped him. Never mind terrorism, let us talk about the other burning issue: corruption. Scan after scam has eroded every Indian’s trust in our democracy, yet has he done anything to restore the trust. Instead of assuring us that justice will be done, he discredits the institution that was only doing it’s job. It is similar to a company’s CEO ranting against the auditors whose only job is to set accounts straight.

Yesterday MM Singh was in Kerala to inaugurate “Emerging Kerala” and did open his mouth to give nothing to Kerala. He only promised yet again (this was promised 8 years ago) that he shall give an IIT. God knows when! 

Prime minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said the proposal to set up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kerala was under Centre's consideration

 

But our much ‘beloved’ economist who asserted that 32 RS is enough to live in India said that Kerala should not look for food security and but use the paddy fields and import food from other states! It really proves that he knows nothing about Kerala.

Vice-Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, speaking at the end of the session, said that Kerala could as well forget paddy cultivation as the State’s food security requirement could well be met by import from other States.

 

For Kerala the low lying lands are necessary for many other reasons, ground water table being the main one. If one is to raise land and construct concrete structures it will be a total disaster. As for food security, Kerala has not forgotten what happened when Mullperiyar Dam issue was at its peak. Tamilnadu stopped sending vegetables and milk and there was none from the center to intervene. In fact one wondered if Tamilnadu was not part of the Indian states but from Pakistan!

Anyway like every other Keralaite let me dream of a Kerala which shall indeed emerge from its lethargic state. Let me also hope that India will one day have a leader like Obama.

Tall dreams I am sure!