Bangalore is set to get a new airport. But its citizens are lobbying to keep the old one going. Somini Sengupta finds out why in the IHT
For years, frequent fliers in this technology hub complained bitterly about having to suffer the indignities of a tattered and tiny airport scrunched in the middle of a busy city neighborhood.
Now, with a new one opening on Saturday, people are clamoring once more. This time, to keep the old airport open.
The reversal does not reflect a sudden bout of nostalgia, but rather the fear that the new airport, no matter how modern it was intended to be, seems destined to be the latest repository of India’s astonishing inability to plan for its future and fix its sagging infrastructure.
The way things stand now, the trip to the new airport, 21 miles outside town, will easily take 90 minutes from the city center, and even longer from the software companies that have turned Bangalore, also known as Bengaluru, into India’s own Silicon Valley.
[Pic: Escalators are cleaned in preparation for Saturday's opening. Ruth Fremason/New York Times]
