REVIEWING AIRPORT PRIVATIZATION: AN EXPERIENCE OF INDIA

: This study has reviewed the airport privatization scenario in the Indian context. It has examined the circumstances of airport infrastructure under the Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) model. The Government of India (GoI) is justifying the development of airports through PPP mode due to their necessity to provide standard services and efficiency of the projects. However, the deficiency in investments and viability gap are being levy in the form of development. It has synthesized several works of literature. It looks at the historical changes and the ways that evidenced the changes. It has reviewed the developing scenario of airport PPP in India. During the 1990s economic liberation, the activities of PPPs emerged in the airport and aviation of India. India has 24 years history of airport PPPs. This study aims to provide a review of airport PPP experience in India. PPPs in the Indian airport industry are examined in sound regulation. The Government of India has adopted PPP schemes instead of going into full privatization of airports. Since the 2000s, PPP models have been adopted in the development of new airports and the reformation of operational and nonoperational airports. In the year 2006, Indira Gandhi International Airport, (IGIA) in Delhi, and Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) in Mumbai were partially privatized. After the successful implication of PPPs, in the airport infrastructure the numbers are growing. In the year 2020, six airports were privatized through the PPP model by Adani Enterprises. To date, there are 21 airports in the pipeline of privatization. However, there remain several challenges and constraints for development and commercialization with private enterprises.


INTRODUCTION
After 1947 the authority of Indian airports was back to the Ministry of Civil Aviation of India (MoCA) (Wang, Zhang, & Zhang, 2018).
According to the AAI website, there are 153 airports in operation, and only 123 airports have scheduled commercial flights also there are several unused airports and airstrips.On the base of the growing number of air passengers, the Indian government has forecasted to build 250 or more airports by 2030 (Latiff & IMM, 2015).
Similarly, in the year 2018 ACI forecasted air passengers of above 22 billion passengers by 2040 (Airports Council International, 2018).The COVID-19, pandemic has also impacted the Indian airports vigorously (Agrawal, 2021).Airlines were forced to suspend and close their operation.Despite the COVID-19, the aviation has achieved 20% growth (Thummala & Hiremath, 2022).Similarly, there is a demand for 2,500 aircraft by 2038.
However, there are issues like investment problems, contract cancellation, and concession problems that are rising and creating problems in the mechanism of airport privatization.
This research tries to investigate Indian airport development, its regulations, and characteristics the path of privatization, and the issues involved.

Literature on Airport Privatization
The study of airport privatization is important and controversial too.

RESEARCH METHOD
It is desk research.A doctrinal method is applied.It has synthesized literatures and secondary data.Similarly, it has analyzed the Ministry of Civil Aviation of India, the AAI dataset, and the electronic database from the World Bank.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The following sections have discussed the development of airport regulations, infrastructure their characteristics.

Airport Regulation in India and its Characteristics
MoCA is responsible for formulating airport and airline-related policies and programs (Krishnan, 2021).Before the establishment of AAI airports were operated and managed under the MoCA.
At that time the mega cities like Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, New Delhi, and Trivandrum were operating International airports through IAAI (Indian Numbered Acts, 2022), and the rest of the domestic airports were operated through (AAI, 1985).
As the beginning deregulation of  The Indian air transport back, to December 1912 after commencing the first international flight London -Karachi-Delhi route (Singh, Sharma, & Srivastava, 2019).
Civil air transport in India started in 1932.The first private company Tata Sons started air service.Indian National Airways began operations with light single-engine aircraft for the carriage of mail (Prasada, 1956).Air services were nationalized as early as 1953 (Saraf, 1989)

Directorate General of Civil Aviation
The DGCA is a regulatory body for Indian aviation (Rathore, Nandi, & Jakhar, 2020).DGCA was an organization of many working groups created for the implementation and adoption of advancements in the airport sector (Saraswati, 2001) through automatic routes (Singh, Dalei, & Raju, 2016, Sankaran, 2017).For Brownfield airports, FDI up to 74% is allowed through automatic routes and beyond that and up to 100%, investment with Government approval.

Airports Economic Regulatory Authority
In the year 2008, India established an economic regulatory authority (Singh, Dalei, & Raju, 2015).Since the liberalization of the airline sector in 2004 the civil aviation industry has been growing steadily (Mahtani & Garg, 2018).
The aviation sector contributed USD 30 billion to India's GDP in 2021 and is expected to be the largest civil aviation market by 2030 (IBEF, 2017a).Every year the Indian Aviation Sector witnessed significant improvements in the movement of traffic in both the passenger and cargo segments (Satpathy, Patnaik, & Kumar, 2017).Source: (MoCA, 2023) Besides the Greenfield and Brownfield airports, 21 and more airports are in the pipeline of airport privatization.

Airport concessions
The concession approach is an agreement of charges or payments made by the airport authority to the business owner to conduct commercial activities (Kim & Shin, 2001).The motto of concession is to develop, modernize, operate, and manage the airport infrastructure (Sambrani, 2014).According Greenfield and Brownfield developments (Vandana, et al., 2020).

India
The following sections discuss the challenges and the issues of airport privatization in India.

Regulatory Framework
To the date India doesnot have a PPP Law in airport privatization.The regulatory framework is still under the consideration of GoI.There is not a similarity in each states of in involving private sectors in the aviation sector.

Land Acquisition
The reluctance to fast-track land

Time and Cost Overruns
Time and cost overruns are major problems associated both in traditional and PPP airports in India.There are massive reasons in India for which delay the project.Political economy is a major reason for starting many projects, which get allocated a limited amount of funds in the annual budget cycle leading to massive time cost overruns.Gondia, nagpur, Srinagar and Silchar airports have experienced cost overruns in 2008 (PTI, 2008).

CONCLUSION
Well-developed airport infrastructure is a prerequisite for the aviation industry to The airport sector is an essential transport sector for every country's economic development.Airports are the backbone infrastructure of the tourism industry.Airports support the movement of people and the transport of goods from one place to another.The airport functions the business on two sides: a) aeronautical (runway and terminal) and b) nonaeronautical (business areas, hotels, parking, etc.).The aeronautical and nonaeronautical components decide the economic growth of the airport (Ricover & Delmon, 2020).The economic growth of airports and the airline industry supports the socio-economic development of a country.India has a long history of airport development.It started airport and aviation-related activities under British Colonization.On February 18, 1911, it launched an airmail service.In 1912 the first international flight was commenced from London to Karachi.In 1924 it constructed of first airport at Gilbert Hill in Bombay, Dum Dum in Calcutta, and Bamrauli in Allahabad.The development, operation, and management were conducted by the British regime (History of Aviation in India, 2022).
According to the market maturity curve by Deloitte, 2006b research, India itself possesses a low and sophisticated area.Das, Bardhan, & Fageda, (2022a) Studied the growing demand for internal and international air travel.International air travel was demanding Indian airports to enhance their capacity.India's decision to invite private capital to participate in the modernization of its metro airports could deliver significant benefits for passengers, airlines, and the government (CAPA, 2014).Additionally, a study by Wang & Song (2020) focused on low and sophisticated countries' airport management in the research from 12 Asian airports concluded that the performance and evaluation have been widely studied.
. Similarly, the Aircraft Act, of 1934, the Aircraft Rules Act, of 1937, the Air Corporation Act, of 1953, the Carriage by Air Act, of 1972, and the Anti-Hijacking Act, of 1982 were enacted and are the backbone of Indian airport, and aviation development policies.The development of several policies in commercialization and privatization policies and processes started in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.Since, the 1990s economic liberalization has contributed to the emergence of a more competitive and market-oriented Indian airport industry (Castro & Lohmann, 2014).Airports Authority of India and Characteristics Organized airport authority in India was established in 1995.The main obligation of AAI is to accelerate in 1972.Since its establishment, AAI has focused on the expansion of airport airline-related infrastructure, passenger terminals, air traffic services, and cargo operations.To date, there are not any fully privatized airports in India.AAI has completed and more percent of control over runways, taxiways, aprons, ground handling services, commercial terminals, communication, and IT inside the airports, and international and domestic operations.
The AERA Act 2008 was enacted on 5 December 2008.AERA determines the tariffs for aeronautical has a long history of establishment and currently, the Indian civil aviation market lies in the 3rd position.

Figure
Figure 2: PPP schemes in Indian Airports grow and add to the economic development in India.The implementation of PPP in Indian airports ae increasing in numbers.The rehabilitation packages are not planned meticulously, and execution is inefficient that may hamper the airport related projects in further.This study is limited.It does not discuss the revenues of particular PPP airports.While conducting this research it was very difficult to acquire PPP airport data.Very few quantitively organized research was available.There are gaps in acquired information.In further studies, the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis could be conceivable.Additionally, the risks and guarantees, of efficiency are also worth searching in the Indian PPP airports.Besides the limitations, this study provides a comprehensive information review of the history and the current situation of airport PPP in India.The findings of this study help other researchers to understand the literature on Indian PPP and give insights for future policy and practicing environment in India.