The reasons for this are not hard to fathom. Airport development contracts have turned into goldmines for contract winners. The tender terms stipulate that private airport developers get a 60 per cent share of AAI earnings from that airport. This enormous earning is assured to the developer even if he does nothing and sits idly at home.

Even this earning pales in comparison to the lucrative business of commercial development of land close to the airports. All private airport developers are selling out spaces for restaurants, duty-free shops and hotels. For example, in Mumbai, once the slums near the airport are removed, private contractor GVK will get one crore square feet of prime land for development worth Rs 8,000 crore. Even if one pays Rs 500 crore for winning the tender for airport development, land rights alone allow him to earn thousands of crores. The private developer in Delhi is also making money out of his contract, but at least his work on the airport is visible.

Grainy picture

A glance at our statistics on agricultural exports reveals a shocking picture. India has the second largest arable land in the world after the US, and the country is the third largest producer of food in the world. Despite this, India ranked 22nd in the world in agricultural and allied products exports, with a measly 1.16 per cent market share. Ironically, food grains take the maximum share of our agri exports.

India is unable to take advantage of a huge export opportunity in fruits, vegetables and flowers because 40 per cent of fruit and vegetable produce in India are wasted. The government agencies like APEDA and ministry of food processing have failed to provide adequate infrastructure and today nobody knows who is responsible for preventing this wastage.

It is a matter of shame that we have still not come up with basic storage and transport infrastructure. Although India has the cold chain for meat, dairy and frozen foods, the same for fruits and vegetables is non-existent. Of the 19.54 million tonnes of cold storage facility in India, 82 per cent is dedicated to potatoes and only 0.2 per cent for other fruits and vegetables.

About seven years ago, the then finance minister Yashwant Sinha, in his budget speech, had announced a grand plan of setting up of a nationwide cold chain in India, but nothing has come up so far. And recent ventures by private retail chains to set up nationwide agriculture storage infrastructure are facing unnecessary opposition from narrow-minded political interests.

The writer is a Congress MP in Rajya Sabha