India is urbanising at, what a Union Minister has termed, a very 'dramatic' clip. It today has 50 cities with a population of over one million. As per the 2011 Census, the total number of cities and towns in the country had increased to 7,936 from 5,161 in 2001.

The decision of the Government of India to spend $10 billion towards airport infrastructure development is a critical move. India is one the few nations in the globe which has recorded a year-on-year passenger growth of nearly 23 per cent.

The new civil aviation policy is aimed at creating an ecosystem of affordable flying for the masses as well as easing industry-related concerns which were long due. To do so, the policy has addressed issues from the regulatory, financial and operational perspectives in a comprehensive manner in three main areas

The new aviation policy has brought in a lot of forward-looking changes to boost the slumping aviation industry; these changes have been made to make the industry more dynamic and lucrative for all the players and to level the playing field. One of the major changes which have been welcomed by the smaller airlines is that, prior to the policy change, an airline needed to have 20 planes and five years of local operations to fly overseas.

Airports are the next infrastructural buzzword that will be the game-changer in India´s developmental leap. This buzzword is expected to be exploited using existing growth drivers like exponential growth in passenger traffic and incremental cargo volumes over the next decade.

The reactions are positive and industry is also quite optimistic on the introduction of NCAP 2016. The objective of the government through NCAP is to establish an integrated ecosystem enabling significant growth of the civil aviation sector, which in turn would promote tourism, increase employment and lead to balanced regional growth.

Mining is a temporary activity which involves intermediate use of land. Typically, the operating life of a mine lasts from a few years to several decades, depending upon the natural environment such as weather, soil and quality, excavation of resources mined through the mining, use and availability of land.

The coal sector remains the most inefficient and least open to private investment, despite coal being the country´s primary source of fuel, says Krrishan Singhania, Managing Partner, Singhania Associates.

In the early 1970s, the Government of India took over the management of coal mines in two tranches. The process kick-started with the nationalisation of coking coal mines in 1971-72, followed by non-coking coal mines the following year. With the enactment of the Coal Mines Act, 1973, all mines were nationalised.