India Takes Off

India regards herself as an aspiring nation, often pointing out her need and right to catch up. This also applies to air travel which has become an integral part of life for the upper class and parts of the growing middle class. India’s Civil Aviation Policy seeks to make flights more accessible and affordable for the less affluent, too.

Bahadur Chand Gupta is a retired aircraft engineer from Haryana. He has purchased a decommissioned aircraft to help children from underprivileged backgrounds experience how it feels to be on board of an aircraft – boarding pass in hand, seatbelts fastened, listening to the safety instructions. As the plane will not take off, it is nicely close to the “zero emissions” target – unlike the rest of Indian aviation.

A subcontinent as a national market

Given the huge size of the Indian subcontinent, domestic flights in the country may well be medium-haul flights, covering distances comparable to those between Oslo and Tunis, or Paris and Moscow. In the period between April 2017 and March 2018 the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation recorded about 123.32 million domestic passengers, along with 60.58 million international passengers. Since then, the figures have continued to increase considerably – and along with them the respective greenhouse gas emissions.

On course for growth

Domestic passenger traffic registered a compound annual growth rate of more than ten percent during the period 2007-08 to 2017-18. The largest share was captured by no-frills airlines, such as IndiGo and Jet Airways. Highly in debt, however, Jet Airways suspended operations in April 2019. Aircraft manufacturer Airbus expects Indian domestic air travel to increase five-fold in terms of passenger traffic between 2017 and 2037 – the highest growth rate worldwide.

International air passenger traffic to and from India is also growing rapidly, at more than eight percent annually over the past ten years. As many Indians work in Gulf countries, more than 50 percent of international air travel is to and from Africa/Middle East. Touristic trips have also become popular, both internationally and nationally.

Sow airports, reap air traffic

This is very much in the interest of the government under Prime Minister Modi which seeks to boost economic growth. It has launched its “Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik Regional Connectivity Scheme (UDAN RCS)“ in 2017 to make domestic air travel more convenient and affordable for common citizens. Considerable subsidies, subsidised tickets and tax incentives are part of India’s Civil Aviation Policy. It is aimed at an increased number of routes (including short-haul and touristic routes) and more airports, also in ‘small’ cities.

According to a report in the ’Times of India’ of July 2019, India plans to construct over 100 new airports by 2035. Some of these airport projects, including mega developments such as the Navi Mumbai Airport, are highly contested. This can be seen from the ‘Environmental Justice Atlas‘, a mapping project on environmental issues which currently shows more than 300 environmental conflicts in India, including several airports and aerotropolis projects.

Resistance against airport construction

In India, resistance of affected people and environmental activists is focussed on the construction and expansion of airports where large natural habitats and sources of livelihood are destroyed and people displaced. Trees are cut down, village communities are evicted, and affected communities rarely receive adequate compensation. In Karad in the Indian state of Maharashtra, for example, villagers have been struggling for eight years against the expansion of the local airport. The expansion would lead to the destruction of fertile agricultural land with irrigation infrastructure on which 25,000 people depend, says Vinayak Shinde, a representative of the affected villagers. ”Many times we have explained to our Maharashtra government about the needlessness of this project,” says Vinayak Shinde. Since 29th July, 2019, the villagers have been organising a ”thiyya aandolan” (sit-in-protest) outside the collector’s office in Satara, the local district capital. According to Vinayak Shinde, the sit-in “will be continued until the government responds in our favour, i.e. cancels the Karad Airport expansion project”.

“Stay Grounded”

The international network ‘Stay Grounded‘ supports such struggles by publicising the conflicts. It also shows that resistance can be successful. In Aranmula in Kerala, where paddy fields and forest were to be sacrificed for the construction of a fifth international airport in the small South Indian state, the project was scrapped following broad-based protest. In Andhra Pradesh, villagers affected by the construction of Bhogapuram Airport successfully fought for increased compensation for land acquisition (which they were entitled to, but which had been reduced).

Such small success is encouraging, but far from sufficient. In a position paper, ‘Stay Grounded‘ demands a just transport system and a rapid reduction of aviation. The All India Forum of Forest Movements (AIFFM) is a member of this network, but has not been questioning air travel as such. “We are in a paradigm where people still believe in legitimate growth”, explains Souparna Lahiri of AIFFM. “Disadvantaged communities are completely disconnected from this and so they don't have any voice or think of articulation vis a vis their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. At this point, the issue of air travel and a movement against that, I believe, is still a Northern phenomenon.”

“Per capita” we are good?

It may help, but not much, to look at the figures on Indian aviation in relation to the Indian population – taking into account the popular ”per capita we are good“ argument often raised. India has among the world’s lowest per capita CO₂ emissions, about 40 percent of the global average. With a population that will soon reach 1.4 billion people and constitutes about 17.7 percent of the world’s total population, India currently contributes about seven percent to global CO₂ emissions. If and how this will change in the future will depend on India herself, but also on successful mitigation in other countries.

The climate, however, does not care about national borders, the attributions based on them, countries’ needs to catch up, or historical responsibility. Cyclones and flooding, water scarcity, droughts, and unbearable heat have already been making people in India and elsewhere suffer increasingly. In order to try and limit the harm inflicted on people and nature, there is a need for common, differentiated (fair enough!), but above all significantly more political responsibility for our global environment and climate.

Christina Kamp is free-lance journalist and translator specialized on tourism and development.