Rise of Aerotropolis in India and Their Economic Importance

With the successful development of major Aerotropolis cities around the world, the Aerotropolis concept is booming up in most of world’s semi urban cities. In India, the scenario is a bit different though. India saw its first Aerotropolis about a year back, when a company named Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited (BAPL) came up with this concept and launched its very first Aerotropolis in the state of West Bengal.

They deployed the Aerotropolis concept over a small town of Durgapur, which was also known as the Steel City. The town was surrounded with many industrial belts and a few steel plants. There was a great potential in development of this airport city, because of rapid growth of industrial hubs in and around this city. BAPL aimed this project towards the socio-economic developments of this area, and so it transformed this city into an Aerotropolis.

The term Aerotropolis revolves around a concept where the social and economic development of a place or a city is fully dependant on the revenues that are generated by the airport and its business structures. In other words, the airport or the airport city works for the development of the society and is also responsible for its economic developments. Under the umbrella term ‘Aerotropolis ‘ an airport becomes multi-model, multi-functional enterprise that are responsible for a considerable amount of commercial developments in its boundaries.

The Bengal Aerotropolis project had many such multi-model roles that were brought into action. It indeed developed a logistic park, business and industrial houses, retail outlets, Information Technology hubs, colleges and universities, hotels, and entertainment centres, food and beverage outlets, multi-speciality hospitals etc. Other than these BAPL also developed a large residential township under this project and named it as Sujalaam – the skycity. It is developed on an area of about 1616 square kilometres. The project was lead by the Larica group. They rolled out about 10,000 units of LIG (Lower Income Group) housing plots, in a mission towards affordable housing for all. The project had indoors amd outdoors infrastructures that included elevators in all residential towers, recreational facilities, swimming pools, retail outlets etc. They also included MIG (Middle Income Group) plots. The price ranged from Rupees five lakhs to fifteen lakhs. 

Mr. Partha Ghosh is the Managing Director of Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited. While constructing the airport, both Mr. Partha Ghosh and the company BAPL (as a whole) worked very intelligently. It developed an old military air base and turned it out into a full-fledged commercial airport. The airport was named after the famous poet of Bengal – Kazi Nazrul Islam Airport. It is spread at an area of about 600 acres. It operates daily flights from Durgapur to New Delhi and Kolkata.  

Author’s bio: Mr. Partha Ghosh of Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited is one, to launch the first ever Aerotropolis city in India. Furthermore, his efforts towards the company are too high that makes both Partha Ghosh and BAPL complement each other.