December 26, 2011: The INS Vikrant aircraft carrier was decommissioned 14 years ago, and remains an unmissable presence at the Naval dockyard in Mumbai. But disuse and worse, indifference from the establishment, has worn away the once forbidding warship, reducing it to a true relic of the past. Efforts to convert it into a museum ship, preserving its long operational history both with the Royal Navy and Indian Navy, have so far resulted in nothing apart from a tentative effort to make it accessible to the public. But all that could change soon, with two private sector firms now competing to infuse as much as Rs 500 crore into the Vikrant, to convert it into a full-fledged museum ship cum commercial space.

The effort will be part of a public-private partnership model, with the investment and profits shared between the private sector companies, Maharashtra's state-run urban infrastructure development authorities and, of course, the navy. One of the big challenges will be moving the ship to a separate location once work actually begins, since it currently occupies prime space in the Mumbai dockyard -- space that the navy could easily use to dock serving warships. The INS Viraat, India's sole operational aircraft carrier is on her last legs, with decommissioning expected later this decade.

The ship has undergone two major refits and life-extensions at the Cochi Shipyard, but now sees limited deployment to sea. In a year, India will receive and commission the INS Vikramaditya (re-christened Admiral Gorshkov) from Russia, while it hopes to induct its first indigenous aircraft carrier, the second INS Vikrant by 2015.

If Viraat is operational then, India will have the distinction of operating three aircraft carriers, an ideal situation as per current doctrine, which dictates deployment of a carrier each on either seaboard, with one in refit/maintenance.