Increased from 148 to 220 airports
SCMP reported that India will spend about 980 billion rubles ($12 billion) over the next two years to build 72 new airports while airlines order hundreds of new aircraft to meet recovering travel demand.
The world's fastest growing aviation market aims to increase the number of airports to 220 by 2025 from the current 148 airports, in which private contractors will invest about 9 billion USD and the state-owned enterprise Airports Authority of India (AAI) will invest the rest.
The plan includes green airport projects, new terminals and renovation of existing facilities such as old military airports that remained from the colonial period.
Although the entire country of 1.42 billion people has only about 700 aircraft, airports in major cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai are running low in landing and landing.
India is asserting itself more widely in the global market, with the growing number of consumers and the growth rate of the $3.2 trillion economy on track to surpass China.
The country has made its mark in the aviation sector, with Air India announcing the biggest deal in the history of commercial aviation last month. Boeing and Airbus have been supplying spare parts from India for many years.
India wants to become a power in aviation, according to Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. Boeing forecasts that India's passenger traffic will increase by nearly 7% per year, compared to 4.9% in China from 2022 to 2041.
Jayant Mukhopadhaya - a researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation - said: "Developing aviation infrastructure will contribute greatly to economic growth. The new airports will improve the quality of life for most people, because the roads in India are still bad and ships are still slow.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to turn India into a world-class connecting center as well as a destination for tourists and businesses. Connecting smaller cities by air is part of Mr. Modi's development program.
Air India - owned by the largest national corporation Tata Group - has ordered 470 aircraft, while indiGo - India's No. 1 airline - is expected to order more.
India is trying to catch up with larger aviation markets such as China. Data from Cirium shows that Asia's third largest economy has more than 1,400 aircraft on order. This is almost double compared to China, although China is looking to nearly double its airports to 450 by 2035, and is operating a significantly larger fleet than India.
Major airport development projects in India include a 2,866- model airport of Adani Group in Navi Mumbai, which will serve 90 million passengers by 2036. The capital Delhi will also have a new airport with a final capacity of 70 million passengers - in a project being developed by Zurich Airport International AG. Other green airports will appear in the states of Karnataka, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
More airports, more pollution
Some experts believe that such large-scale infrastructure projects could increase air pollution in India. That highlights the tension between Modi's goal of turning India into a developed country in the next 25 years and the goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2070.
Few countries have ambitious aviation targets like India, said Lewis Burroughs, a director at Virgina-based ICF International Inc. Achieving those targets would mean increasing emissions.
India wants to have more than 90 carbon-neutral airports by 2024, but this is a difficult challenge as there are currently only two such airports in New Delhi and the southern port city of Kochi.
Projects underway near Mumbai and New Delhi have faced backlash over environmental concerns. Debi Goenka - founder of the Conservation Action Committee - said that locations should be chosen in a way that minimizes the impact on the environment and ecology.
Representatives of the two airports under construction said their plan is to cut emissions by using renewable energy sources and electric vehicles.
But with Prime Minister Modi focusing on growth - he is aiming to achieve a GDP of 5 trillion USD by 2025 - aviation will continue to be high on his priority list. The Center for Economic and Business Research predicts that India will become a worth tens of thousands of billions of USD by 2035.
According to the General Department of Civil Aviation, local air traffic volume increased by 96% in January, equal to the level before the pandemic in 2019.
In addition to the domestic recovery, India is also emerging as one of the favorite destinations for production. Many businesses such as Foxconn - Apple's partner - are setting up factories, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in India. That means the country needs better airports with increased capacity as travel demand increases.
