Lagos — Torn between the old name Bombai and the new one Mumbai, the few moments that Tunde Rahman, on tour of India spent in the Maharathi city have suddenly become more revealing than the ordinary eye can see

There was no reason for me to be in Mumbai or Bombay, the capital of the Indian State of Maharashtra, where I sent this piece. Bombay I had heard of at least but I was just getting to know of Mumbai. But the two are one and the same. Bombay used to be the name of this Indian city and the same city I understand was also earlier called Mumbai. But the Maharathi people reverted to the name- Mumbai around 1995 when they were said to have complained that Bombay was an English name.

Notwithstanding this, some international airlines still chose to refer to the town as Bombay. With an estimated population of thirteen million, Mumbai is said to be the most populous city in India. It is the economic nerve centre or, if you like, the commercial or economic capital of India, playing host to the big companies. It's to India what Shanghai is to China though Beijing remains the capital or to what Lagos is to Nigeria though Abuja is the official capital. I had no business in Mumbai as I said.

But the Ethiopian Airline (ET) scheduled to take me to New Delhi, India to attend a summit of African/Indian Editors had delayed my flight for several hours on March 26 in Lagos. When eventually we took off at about 10 pm Nigerian time that day and arrived Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, six hours later, I had missed my connecting flight to New Delhi. ET, however, arranged another connecting flight for me to take me to my destination, New Delhi, but this time the trip was routed through Mumbai, something I never anticipated.

There I was in the bowel of the domestic wing of Chihatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai or Mumbai International Airport for short, waiting to catch the final flight to New Delhi, this time, a domestic flight, aboard Jet Airways. It was about 6 am Indian time; India is about five hours ahead of Nigeria. I had arrived the international wing of the airport around 5.30 am looking tired and almost worn out. Airport immigration formalities over, we were ferried to the domestic wing free by a bus, a distance of about 20 minutes but within the same big compound of the airport.

At the domestic wing, what hit me was the smooth running of things here. The efficiency of things that I saw was simply breath-taking. It immediately contrasted sharply with what I had experienced at the international wing. There was a bit of disorganisation at the international wing, though a huge construction was going on to either expand or beautify the place. I noticed a few inscriptions on the way pleading with passengers to bear with the authorities of the place.

The airport was very busy as one international flight was terminating after another. The airport is said to be the busiest in South Asia. But I remember joking with one immigration official asking for my Yellow Fever Vaccination Certificate that India too needed to show me its vaccination against mosquito before I had any contact with it because mosquitoes were all over the place at the airport. But it was a different ball game at the domestic wing. Everywhere looked clean and sparkling. I was later told the entire place had been privatised whereas the process of the privatisation of the international wing is ongoing. What I saw was another testimony to the beauty of private initiative if the transfer process is properly handled.

I was also told that the various states have some control over the airports in their areas, be it local or international. Mumbai is not only the commercial centre of India, it also accounts for 25 per cent of industrial output, 40 per cent of maritime trade, and 70 per cent of capital transactions to India's economy, according to information about the town which I picked on the Internet. Mumbai is one of the world's top 10 centres of commerce by global financial flow, home to financial institutions such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, and the National Stock Exchange of India.

The city also houses India's Hindi film and television industry, known as Bollywood. Indians don't joke with security. At every point till my point of boarding the Jet Airways plane, myself and my small handbag containing my laptop and one or two other little things were screened, re-screened and over-screened. As I sat at the departure hall, I watched as the various local flights were called and passengers queued to be screened up to the point of boarding.

I heard some local destinations such as Bangalore, Chennai, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Agartala, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Raipur, Nagpur and many others I had never heard before. At each of the departure points, the various local destinations and the flight numbers were running electronically on the exit door. As you wait, you have more than a dozen daily newspapers all of them broadsheet, which you can even take away. Newspapers are almost free here almost selling for one a penny. The media in the country is very vibrant and their content, language very rich indeed. There is so much to read and so in-depth reports, which appears to be in tandem with their level of development, which is very high.

I eventually arrived New Delhi from Mumbai, about a two-hour flight. By that time, my colleagues from the other 14 African countries had all virtually arrived. I missed the first engagement - briefings from the Indian Electoral Commission (IEC) - and it was like they missed me at the event also as I was told later many wanted to know what happened with the 2007 elections in Nigeria. Perhaps, I was lucky to be absent at the event.

As I joined my colleagues shortly after the event at the Hotel Oberoi, New Delhi, where we were all accommodated, the tight familiarisation tour of India began in full swing with a couple of other briefings and visits to historical monuments in the country. The Indian-African Editors' Forum, which was built into the trip was to start a few days later and the conference of Indian and African Leaders at which President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua is being expected to attend will hopefully be under way from next week Monday.