The People’s Airport

DECEMBER 2003 - As another year closes somehow creating the illusion of time flying faster than ever before, there is, among the stories of gloom and doom that largely characterise public life here, a stirring example of what can be achieved even under adverse conditions. Not far from the industrious and unusual city of Sialkot, an international airport has been coming up faster than it takes to stitch a football.

Sialkot is no ordinary city and the people who live here and give it substance, are no ordinary people. Long known for their prowess in creating anything that they wished to and blessed with extraordinary skills, the city has been home to some of the finest artisans and craftsmen the world has seen. In their hands lies some kind of magic as they weave miracle after miracle, setting records that are unlikely to be challenged leave alone surpassed. When one was growing up in this city, having settled here after migrating from Jammu and Kashmir in the late forties, the beginnings of what was going to become a great Sialkot tradition of industry were already visible. Mohammad Din who hand crafted some of the most exquisite cricket bats, in a long narrow room no more than a few feet by a few feet and whose reputation enticed the visiting MCC team to descend on his little shop, was a master craftsman. The balance and stroke play that flowed from his bats was the stuff dreams are made of and what is more, you could select your brand. The Autograph, Gunn & Moore, Slazenger or if you were a snob, no name at all. Mohammad Din made them all, without fuss, without hurry. Quiet efficiency and a product that stood the test of time. As the world discovered, there were hundreds – no thousands of Mohammad Dins in the small city of Sialkot and in the fifty years or so since Partition, while the country regressed, the business community surged ahead, a tidal wave of professionals who could not be stopped by any amount of red tape, officialdom or bureaucratic indifference. Today, the city exports range somewhere between Rs 40-50 million every day and they aim to hit the US$ one billion mark shortly. But while the industries of steel, wood, leather and fabric continued to weave their special brand of magic, gaining literally by the hour, the groaning infrastructure failed to keep even the semblance of staying in step and left the city to fend for itself.

The city fell apart at the seams as exports continued to climb higher and higher. On the one hand, while Sialkot alone stood at par with giants like South Korea in terms of per capita income, it looked like a city that had been bombarded by a rainfall of meteors. The roads were pock marked like a bad case of small pox, the poor state of utilities worsened by the hour and repeated requests to consider the special circumstances of this special city fell on the proverbial deaf ears. The city needed a facelift, an improvement in communications and above all, a dry port and dream of dreams, an airport, but when the gutters couldn’t be fixed, what hope was there of anything else materializing? In sheer frustration, the business community decided that they had waited long enough for the government to step in and solve increasingly serious problems. They built their own dry port and today it hums like a top because it is not saddled with the burdens that cripple the best conceived plans. New roads too began to emerge, the kind you associate with Lahore’s more pampered areas. Encouraged by their own spirit of enterprise, the businessmen plunged ahead, with what many regarded as a foolish and impractical project –an airport all their own.

In about 2.5 years since it took off, the new airport is nearing completion at a brisk pace. It has the most modern conveniences planned and has the country’s longest runway, thereby ensuring that fully laden cargo jumbo jets can lift off in extreme temperatures. It has numerous other state-of-the-art features and the airport is expected to host the first international cargo plane landing on, what else, Pakistan’s independence day in August 2004. When it is going to be ready, it will be an embarrassment to many people. The time taken to build it and the money it has cost is in stark contrast to what the monster project in Lahore has achieved. Sialkot will cost a fraction of what Allama Iqbal Airport in Lahore has cost. Unlike the long line of sharks, which fed on the money, there are none at Silakot because those whose money it is are supervising every stage of the airport’s construction. This Thursday, on the 100th anniversary of the first flight from Kitty Hawk, the Punjab Chief Minister will chopper down to perform the Ground Breaking Ceremony of this amazing feat of human determination and enterprise.

Of the airport’s estimated cost of Rs 1570 million, Rs 1500 plus, if my unreliable Math is to be trusted, has already been raised by the people of Sialkot through 200 businessmen. Each of these gentlemen has put in Rs 5 million to raise Rs 1000 million and set the ball rolling. They are all directors of SIAL and perhaps 200 directors is another Sialkot first. I hope so. In a gathering two weeks back, under a colourful canopy and a guest list of about 700 of Sialkot’s best, there was a fundraiser of sorts where the directors were asked to invest in shares in the new airport for their wives or daughters. In 20 minutes, Rs 150 million had been pledged and more is on the way. None of the directors, to the best of my knowledge has any inkling of how airports are built or operated, but that has hardly deterred them. Used as they are to creating value out of basic materials, they have assimilated knowledge and learnt quickly. One of them quipped and said, ‘we travel so much and we have digital cameras. We photograph what we see and understand how things work.’ This experience has been distilled into the making of this new airport. Above all, they have, as much as they could, entrusted the work to professionals, preferring to let them do the work but keeping a close eye on every detail. That largely explains the amazing speed and cost at which this airport has been built. And since it is their money, they neither waste it, nor gobble it up when no one is looking. No wonder it is costing a fraction of what Lahore did. There were too many people making too many killings for Lahore to have been completed within cost.

When the airport is ready, it will bring in enormous savings to the community it will serve and the adjacent areas of Gujranwala, Gujrat and of course Sialkot too, will greatly benefit. Goods that would wait at Lahore airport will now be out of Pakistan in no time at all. The entire project is what the Singaporeans would call, ‘a win, win situation.’ Is there any lesson to be learnt here? Of course. Lots of lessons, most of which are obvious. The business people of Sialkot have proved that faith, will power and the desire to succeed, can move mountains. They have shown that anything is possible, even in a country where nothing is allowed to happen unless it is illegitimate. The spirit that has transformed a small city into a force that affects life styles in most parts of the world has simply refused to accept the ordinary and risen above it. It has forced the government to sit up and take notice. For those of us who know Sialkot, all this is not a surprise. If there were half a dozen other Sialkots, we wouldn’t be in the sorry state we are in as another year dies away.