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Journalism of Courage
Days after Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram criticised Pune8217;s civic administration for the crumbling infrastructure, his ministerial colleague Kumari Selja warned that the Rs 300-crore hawkers8217; zone project she was there to inaugurate, with Union Minister for Urban Development S Jaipal Reddy, should not be relegated to mere election stunts.
If the Union Minister for State Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation was rather cryptic about the future of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission JNNURM project in the city, Chidambaram did not mince words. 8220;I was travelling on Pune roads today. They are bad. Flyovers are incomplete. If you want investments, please lay good roads, build flyovers and create better infrastructure,8221; he said. And when the bogey of defence clearance was raised as an impediment, he chided his party workers: 8220;It is not the Russian defence authority. It is our Defence ministry.8221;
Take the case of the city8217;s almost Detroit-like auto industry with its star cast 8212; from the Tata Motors stable to the opulence of Mercs from Daimler Chrysler. When General Motors decided to look outside Gujarat for its second plant at an investment of Rs 1,250 crore, it was Talegaon near Pune that came up trumps. The latest entry into the auto hub called Pune is Volkswagen AG that is setting up a
Rs 2,400-crore facility at Chakan near Pune. Daimler Chrysler never looked beyond Pune where it first set up base in 1995 for its second plant at an investment of Rs 250 crore.
On the other side of Pune8217;s development story are the call centres and BPOs. As Indian service providers are continually under pressure to expand their workforce at a break-neck pace, industry watchers are convinced that cities like Pune with choking infrastructure will soon get overlooked. 8220;Service providers have started looking at Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities which provide relatively untapped work-force that is cheaper and more stable. The quality of life in these smaller towns is also perceived to be better than those of the major cities that are struggling with infrastructure overload, thus making them close to unlivable,8221; said Partha Iyengar, vice-president and head of research, Gartner India.
For far too long, Pune has been passing the buck, thanks to the multiplicity of control with two municipal corporations 8212; Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad 8212; and a smattering of cantonment boards. And efforts to set up a Metropolitan Region Development Authority as in other urban agglomerates have been stymied under one pretext or the other.
The city8217;s public transport suffers due to lack of coordination between the utilities run by the two municipal corporations. There have been unconvincing efforts towards toning up roads and construction of flyovers has been dragging feet.
And it does not help that the ITeS-powered Indian real estate investment cycle has been rolling on at a speed that has baffled the puritans. While it may be a bit premature to write an obituary on the Pune8217;s BPO/call centre powered realty boom, the long-term view on Pune as a real estate investment destination is not too hot, say investment fund managers.
Pune has also suffered, say local industrialists, in the absence of a full-fledged airport. The demand for Pune8217;s own international airport that has been doing the rounds for decades. 8220;We watch with envy as our counterparts from Bangalore and Hyderabad take direct flights home from airports like Charles de Gaulle and JFK. For sectors like IT, we need to sell Pune to the outside world8212;always an uphill task minus a truly international airport,8221; says Ravi Pandit, Managing Director of KPIT Cummins.
Now, the JNNURM projects provide some hope for Pune. Unless, these too die a natural death once the civic polls get over by next March. The first inkling that things are likely to be no different came when the Bus Rapid Transit System BRTS pilot inaugurated last Sunday, claimed its first victim the next day when a man was crushed to death by a vehicle that was not supposed to ply in the lane dedicated for BRTS vehicles. And on Tuesday, the BRTS vehicles did not ply, even as political parties began demonstrations.
Meanwhile, the investments continue to pour in.
