In February, the luxurious Terminal 2 at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport opened to great media excitement. There was much gushing about the shiny retail outlets, peacock-hued skylights and the so-called public art on its walls. Weeks after the Rs 5,200-crore project was inaugurated, the airport authorities added a detail they'd forgotten: a school of guppies, sourced from Rajasthan.

Proving that there's only so much world-class facilities can do to insulate themselves from the reality of the grimy city outside, the T2 terminal has been plagued by squadrons of mosquitoes. Warned one frequent flier, "No one should go to the new Terminal 2 without every form of mosquito repellant."

This should scarcely have been surprising. There are many potential mosquito-breeding grounds in the vicinity of T2. A long open nallah or gutter greets passengers at the airport gates. The airport lies on the banks of the Mithi, a river choked with garbage and toxic effluents. The facility is also surrounded by numerous slums, including Annawadi, whose resilient residents are the subject of Katherine Boo’s celebrated book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Among the features of Annawadi that finds repeated mention in Boo's book is its smelly sewage lake, which creeps "forward like a living thing" during the monsoon.

It would seem obvious to most people that the harsh conditions outside would percolate T2's glass-curtained walls sooner than later. But since the authorities can't be bothered to find a genuine solution to the problem by improving conditions around the airport, they have resorted to a bunch of quick fixes.

At the end of February, the city’s municipal corporation gave the airport 550 guppies obtained from Rajasthan, to be introduced into the murky waters of the nallah. Guppies feed on mosquito larvae and are a popular weapon against the disease-carrying insects. “These fish are in addition to the guppies that the BMC [Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation] has already been using in the gutters,” said a spokesperson from the Mumbai International Airport Limited.

Besides the fish, MIAL has contracted 15 labourers to walk the length of the gutter every day to clean out trash, weeds and anything else obstructing the flow of the water. “Now that we ensure that the water is constantly flowing, mosquito breeding has reduced,” said the spokesperson.

The BMC’s local ward office has deployed one officer to look after the airport area, and he supervises, among other things, weekly oil spraying on the surface of the river to prevent mosquito breeding.

The airport also has a contract with a pest control agency to fumigate the outside area daily. Indoors, keeping in mind the discomfort pesticide sprays could cause passengers, MIAL has employed a different weapon: a whole team of housekeeping staff who spend all day and night batting mosquitoes with battery-operated electric racquets.

That’s not all. The airport spent Rs 24 lakh to purchase 20 special mosquito-killing systems, certified by the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The machine emits the gas to attract the female mosquitoes that spread dengue and malaria. They are trapped and killed inside the machine.

Indeed, fliers and airport staff members are already happier. “Since all of these measures have been put in place, we’ve had some relief from mosquitoes,” said one security guard who did not wish to be named.

But urban planning experts have not missed the irony of T2’s situation: a multi-crore island of architectural glory that has to now spend even more money to shield itself from its environs.  “T2 was built to show the world that we have arrived, but we cannot insulate ourselves from our surroundings,” said Rishi Aggarwal, an environmental activist.

He said that after the massive floods of July 2005, which left 447 Mumbai residents dead, the municipal corporation should have focused on improving the ecological quality of the Mithi river, to deal with problems right at the root. Instead, he says, the corporation spent crores to build high walls on the sides of the river, to blast rocks at the mouth and to desilt it regularly.

Now, the plush new airport terminal has to spend lakhs every month to fight a mosquito invasion in elaborate ways. Said Aggarwal, “If we only take pride in private spaces and neglect common spaces, sooner or later it will come back to bite.”


This NASA-certified machine kills disease-causing female mosquitoes.