Nagpur Redux

Now that the airport has been handed over to MIHAN India Limited (MIL), work will be speeded up to complete the Multimodal International Hub.

Nagpur — the city in the centre of India — has once again started making it to the headlines. The plans to create an international multi-modal cargo hub and airport like the ones in Dubai, Hong Kong or Singapore had almost ended with only a few takers in the logistics park. The concept for an air cargo hub began sometime in 2008 with much fanfare but it had not taken off.

The fortunes of MIHAN or the Multimodal International Hub and Airport at Nagpur as it is known have been changing with a lot of activity on the ground. While the credit for kick-starting MIHAN can well go to two of the city’s well known personalities — Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari — it is Fadnavis who has been promoting the city. Last year, for example, during the ‘Make in India’ week held in Mumbai, Nagpur was hyped as an investment hub and it received commitments from electronics, textile, defence, infrastructure and agro industries.

Only two hours away, for example, is Amravati which is being promoted as the country’s largest textile hub. However, what is grabbing the headlines is the city’s slow emergence as a defence hub. As recently a few months ago, the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group along with French partner Dassault has set up an unit for the manufacture of the Rafale aircraft. In addition, Tata’s aerospace business unit is also in MIHAN.