In the middle of the winter, the Srinagar Airport was all bedecked to receive an International flight from Dubai by no less a person than the Congress president Sonia Gandhi. It was trumpeted around not only as a milestone for Kashmir Tourism but in fact a revolutionary step in ending decades old isolation of Kashmir from the outside world. The single flight on every Saturday has been operating for almost 5 months now. Neither is there any addition in the present routing nor any further movement regarding the International Flights to other places. Even the present flight is having many problems. The Air India Express, a subsidiary of Air India which is operating this flight had earlier stated that they do not have sufficient load and the flight may not be viable. However, the facts speak otherwise. For last few Saturdays the flight is being highly overbooked from Dubai. There are absolutely no seats available for next few Saturdays also. The aircraft used is a Boeing which has a capacity of 180 persons but due to high temperature and baggage, only 160 or so passengers are carried. If there was such a heavy rush, the Air India authorities could easily increase the frequency or use a larger aircraft like an Airbus. There seems to be some hitch somewhere. Firstly, the service started is not a tourist friendly one but a cheap flight for the labour class. Air India had started Air India Express to cater for the large labour force working in the Gulf Region. The normal tourist flights having the first, the business class and other configurations were not getting enough loads some years back. In order to provide cheaper flights in a very cramped setting for the large labour force working in the Gulf, the Air India floated a subsidiary company called the Air India Express. These flights are known in the Gulf as “Malabari Flights” as they carry the labour class which mostly comprises of people from the Malabar Region. The people who have recently taken the flight observed that it is very tiresome, cramped, unduly long, and sometimes quite annoying. The longer duration is probably due to the refusal of Pakistani authorities to allow over-flights to Kashmir or some other similar political hiccup to which Kashmiris are now fully used to? There is hardly any leg space and people are squeezed in like sardines. One cannot move in the aircraft. It is very annoying for the kids. The meals are given in a paper pack and are very unappetising. These are the same as are distributed among passengers at domestic terminals in case of delayed flights. Only consolation is that it is a direct flight and one does not have to pass through Delhi. Not a good bargain for potential tourists coming with families!

The flight to Kashmir was supposed to be a prestigious one specifically targeted to Gulf tourists both Arab and Expatriate ones. In addition, it was expected to provide a direct connection to foreigners passing through the Gulf region and having connections from Dubai. They could easily spend a week end in Kashmir if there was a proper connection. Unfortunately, most of the Kashmir projects have lately been limited to a superficial treatment. These are started with great fanfare to capture diplomatic space globally and then conveniently forgotten. The implementation is in a very lackadaisical fashion at an abnormally slow rate. Even the up gradation of the Airport took a number of years after the project was sanctioned. Even now the International Airport is without any aero-bridges. This is understandable in view of the operation of a single weekly flight. Had there been many more International flights to cater to, they may have been forced to accelerate the installation of aerobridges. There is also shortage of apron space for parking. Only four aircraft can be parked at one time. The project of providing apron space for nine aircraft is still incomplete. Sometimes the domestic flights have to wait on the runway before they can get a parking slot. Recently, even the aircraft carrying Sujit Bannerji, the Union Tourism Secretary had to wait for more than an hour to get a parking slot! Such a thing would not have happened if the whole project had been conceived and implemented in a planned manner with sufficient advance ground work. We are now used to ad hoc measures being taken under political compulsions in every sphere. There are no arrangements for visa in Srinagar and people who want to take the flight have to first obtain visas in Delhi or seek a sponsor from abroad. Had a tie up been arranged between the tour operators of Dubai and Kashmir in advance, they could have been issuing online visas. The other area of operation which needs attention is the cargo handling. The Dubai flight and other International flights from Kashmir can carry sufficiently large amount of cargo in the form of handicraft products which are exported in bulk from Srinagar to numerous destinations in the Middle East and even further. If one also considers the perishable cargo like fruit, flowers, and trout fish which may eventually start moving from here to the Gulf Region then the cargo side needs comprehensive up gradation with totally mechanized handling, a cold chain and so on. In order to be successful, the entire project of the up gradation of the Airport and operation of International flights needs to be taken as an integral whole on an all inclusive basis. One has to simultaneously consider all the components so that there is sufficient co-ordination between various concerned agencies to achieve the viable end result. And above all else one has to be sincere and honest in implementing the project and not to do it for propaganda purposes or for public consumption.

Sometime earlier it had been suggested in these columns that to ensure timely completion of the project with all its components the Government should constitute a special Task force preferably under the State Chief Minister. This was more so in view of the importance of this project both for Kashmir’s economy and for ending the psychological isolation of Kashmir. A window of opportunity had been opened for Kashmiris and both the Government and the people at large should have grabbed it. Both seem to be disinterested and are moving at a snails pace. This has been the usual fate of most of the Confidence Building Measures also. These were started with enormous media coverage and great fanfare but over a period of time these have stalled to the extent of getting totally frozen in time with symbolic value only. Be it the cross LOC travel or the last year’s cross LOC trade or this prestigious International flight. The treatment is almost the same. Somehow one gets the feeling that the extreme alienation of the people of Kashmir has made the authorities in Delhi somewhat reluctant as well as hesitant in putting their heart in the developmental projects of Kashmir! Alienation can be reduced only if they sincerely implement various infrastructure development projects so as to make the people feel the difference.

This new link was an important mile stone for the Tourism sector. However, both the State and the Central Tourism Departments have not even been able to arrange an exchange of Travel Trade and Travel Media between Kashmir and Gulf so far. For some unknown reasons the State Tourism Department did not even attend the prestigious Travel Show the Arabian Travel Mart in Dubai which comes at third ranking after the famous World Travel Mart of London and the International Tourism Bourse of Berlin. They must concentrate on this new window both to the Arab World and the sufficiently large western expatriate population working in the Middle East especially in the Gulf region. For them Kashmir is a very short haul year round tourist destination and for the State Tourism Department it is the nearest foreign market. It would be a pity if this golden opportunity is not fully exploited!
While as the State Government and the local people have to speed up their activities to make use of this opening, the Central Government and the concerned Civil aviation authorities including the top brass of Air India have to get their act together. They should not make this project go the way of other Confidence Building Measures but take it as a vital step to ameliorate the lot of Kashmiris. All round improvements not only need to be done on an accelerated pace but these must appear to being done! Let us hope it will not remain a single swallow and there will be many more to announce the advent of real summer in Kashmir!