Ease of Doing Business Within Govt More Important Than With It
Navi Mumbai Airport readies for grand debut, but road links and rail hurdles highlight Mumbai’s urgent need for better cross-connections.
The Gist
The new Navi Mumbai International Airport's opening is overshadowed by significant delays in the connecting infrastructure, raising questions about its practicality.
- Construction of a 4.5 km elevated corridor has faced numerous setbacks, with completion now pushed to January 2027.
- Indian Railways has raised concerns regarding the necessary approvals for the project, complicating progress.
- Despite the airport's modern design, inadequate road access may limit its operational success.
On October 8, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate a new airport outside Mumbai, the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA).
But operations at the new airport will start only in December, we are being told.
So why the inauguration now?
Speaking as a selfish western Mumbai resident, the honourable Prime Minister might as well inaugurate the airport a year or two later.
Because that’s when a crucial 4.5 km, 4-lane elevated corridor east-west connector is supposed to be ready.
Slow Lane To The Airport
This road will link the western parts of Mumbai including the city’s pride, the Coastal Road, with the ambitious Atal Setu sea bridge which presently connects Mumbai’s desolate eastern corridor with the mainland; and Ulwe, the area where the new airport is located.
The 21.8 km bridge is quite an achievement, not just for its engineering smarts but also the relatively shorter time taken to build, which is six years.
But reaching the bridge for anyone on the western part of Mumbai is a mighty challenge. It involves navigating choked, narrow streets and potholed roads which were never designed to act as cross-city arterial roads.
Hence, my plea is to postpone the inauguration by two years.
Maybe one is being unduly pessimistic.
So let’s see what has been promised.
The Promised Bridge
On August 4 or two months ago, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said the connector would be ready in a year’s time which was not a bad timeline in itself.
But the latest target we hear is January 2027.
But is that also feasible ?
Because in June 2024, Mr Phadnavis’ junior colleague and state deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said the Sewri-Worli connector will be opened for traffic by the end of December 2025.
We are of course in October 2025.
As always in infrastructure, it is useful to see what the journey so far has been.
First, construction for this connector actually started in 2021 - all you see now is abandoned pillars and half blocked roads though it was planned in 2013 precisely for this purpose, to connect into the transharbour link or Atal Setu.
But the Atal Setu itself was delayed even as the connector project was revived in 2016.
Anyway, let’s now assume all ministers concerned have summoned all the powers at their command to push through this project.
But what about the Railways over whose lines the bridge will pass?
Bridge Over Troubled Waters
The Hindustan Times reported last week the Indian Railways has already raised a red flag, warning it won’t allow the project to proceed until its demand for ‘way leave charges’ is approved.
By the way, there is no bridge in Mumbai the Railways will not block, as history has shown.
Bridges over railway lines in Mumbai with 2-3 year construction timelines; in themselves unpardonable in this day and age, end up taking anywhere between 6-7 years.
The argument here apparently is that Maha Rail (Maharashtra Rail Infrastructure Development Corporation), which is executing the project, will need to use railway land to construct the new state-of-the-art, double-deck flyover.
For this, the railways are due ‘way leave charges’ which is effectively rent, for the project’s estimated two-year duration, the HT reported.
While the Central Railway (CR) is asking for Rs 10 crore, the Western Railway (WR) has asked Maha Rail to cough up Rs 59.14 crore, a sum yet to be approved by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), which has contracted the project to Maha Rail, a joint venture between the state government and the Indian Railways.
The further mechanics of this only get more painful and depressing as you read further. But the Railways is run by the same party that runs the state government of Maharashtra and we often hear such a combination is a winner when it comes to quick project execution.
The most unfortunate part of this is of course that officials at Adani Airports, despite gushing newspaper reports that carefully leave out the lack of connectivity, must be tearing their hair apart at the delays in this bridge.
Because it will be tough to get the airport truly operational unless most of the flights take off or arrive between 2 am and 8 am, give or take, the band during which west-based residents can hope to reach in good time and hopefully health.
Incidentally, the Navi Mumbai airport too is delayed given it was proposed around 1997, got approvals in 2007 but has faced several delays and hurdles along the way, including land acquisition.
But anyway here we are here in 2025, with a spanking new, tech-savvy airport and very few roads connecting to it, particularly the highly-dense Western Mumbai.
Metros: Half Way Through
On the other hand, Mumbai’s main airport terminals in Santacruz and Andheri have been linked by a world-class new metro line, the full operations of which will also start in a week or two.
Presently, it is running a little more than half way into south Mumbai.
So the existing airport, also run by the Adanis, has even better connectivity than before while a newer one is struggling for it.
Funnily, the metro line has been built by the same government struggling to get the Railways and the bridge or connector builders into a room and sort things.
Mumbai’s metro has also been delayed by several years but was clearly a more complex engineering task to execute, given that several critical parts run underground across Mumbai’s north-south axis.
There are of course several lessons here.
First, infrastructure timelines in India never stand, almost all the time. By extension, intermodal planning may be good on paper but fails on ground.
Ease of doing business is not just for the private sector, it is equally applicable to dealings within government, whether in this case involving the Railways or elsewhere.
Internal turf wars can bring the most noble intentionals to a grinding halt.
Conversely, if we can’t achieve ease of doing business inside the Government, then doing so outside is a much tougher call.
And finally, for reasons clear and unclear, maybe building underground in India is more efficient than on ground.
