Technopolis Now

Apart from Infosys and DLF, the anchor investors, companies like IBM Daksh, OuterBay and Net Solutions are moving in. Six firms8212;Amadeus, KMG Infotech, Microtek, Bebo Technologies, Synapse and Alchemist8212;have been allotted built-to-suit sites and are expected to start operations within a year.

8216;8216;Chandigarh has all the elements to specialise in BPOs. From good manpower to state-of-the-art infrastructure and excellent quality of life, the city has all that8217;s necessary for a company looking to set up a BPO or an export-oriented software unit,8217;8217; hardsells Atrey, who has been overseeing the Chandigarh Technology Park CTP ever since it was conceived by former UT Administrator, Lt-Gen J F R Jacob in 2001.

Power Save
WE8217;VE heard those lines before. Virtually every city worth its doddering infrastructure, from Kolkata to Pune, has tried to appropriate this pollution-free, manpower-dependent, cash-rich industry; not many have lived up to their ambitions. Sceptics are already wondering if Chandigarh will prove any different.

8216;8216;The CTP has been set up to bypass the kind of infrastructural problems read traffic congestion, inadequate roads faced by IT companies in Bangalore,8217;8217; Atrey goes on the defensive. 8216;8216;It8217;s ideally located and close to both the railway station and the airport.8217;8217;

Big Money seems to be buying the promises. Apart from Infosys, the main anchor company which has its campus over an area of 525,000 sq ft, DLF has snapped up 12.5 acres to build six blocks, which will be leased out to various companies. Of the 123-acre park, 60 acres have been earmarked for IT companies.

Backing its own horse, the UT Administration plans to set up a Rs 12-crore Entrepreneur Development Centre to provide research and incubation facilities to software and R038;D companies.

The ace up the UT sleeve, however, is the none of these: It is the Special Economic Zone SEZ status that came the CTP8217;s way last week. 8216;8216;This will certainly help the park perform beyond our expectations,8217;8217; says an exultant Atrey.

The SEZ status gives companies a number of benefits, including tax exemptions and duty waivers, single-window clearance systems and permission to build captive power units. The declaration is expected to be especially attractive to multi-national IT companies.

Windows of Opportunity
EVEN as the UT Administration faces cases filed by Kishangarh farmers who lost their land to the park8212;they stand accused of violating environment laws to fell thousands of trees8212;the authorities insist the ultimate beneficiaries of the IT park will be the local populace.

8216;8216;Apart from Infosys, which is into software export, all the companies plan to launch their BPO units here. So the local youth will no longer have to move out of Chandigarh in search of jobs,8217;8217; says Atrey.

While Infosys is planning to employ 5,000 IT professionals, 10,000 more will be employed at the DLF space. About 1,000 engineers and professionals are expected to be working in the Park by October; by end-2005, another 5,000 are pitched to join them.

Which explains the second phase of the Administration8217;s plans: 250 acres earmarked to be developed as a Technology Habitat. While 115 acres will be absorbed into the technology park, the rest will be given over to residences, a hotel, multiplex, shopping malls and the like.

The expected flood of professionals is also likely to change the life of the residents here. Already, property prices and rents in areas near the Park have started shooting up. The Administration is also relaxing rules to shore up the city8217;s night life and working to upgrade the city infrastructure, including the conversion of the domestic air terminal into an international airport.

Besides, many city schools and colleges have started IT-related courses with an eye to projected requirements for trained personnel.

As Atrey puts it, 8216;8216;Hopefully, it will stop the brain drain. And Chandigarh will no longer be called the city of the tired and retired.8217;8217;

Earning Curve
Not just IT, the boom wears several faces

MANRAJ GREWAL

CHANDIGARH is a city in a hurry. After five decades of being dismissed as dull, the city8217;s making up for lost time, topping nationwide indices on per capita income, vehicle-ownership, mobile-penetration and power consumption.

The city has undergone a huge transformation in the last two years, gushes Ratika Jain, head of the Chandigarh chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industries CII, explaining how the rise of Baddi as an industrial hub towards the city8217;s north and the influx of IT giants like Quark and Dell have spurred growth like never before.

Apart from its unique socio-economic profile that gives it the highest per capita income in the country, the city has the advantage of having conscientious planners who are shoring up infrastructure, but without diluting the flavour of Chandigarh, says Jain.

Connectivity, which used to be a sore point with out-of-towners, is looking up with three flights to Delhi a day. One of these allows you to go all the way to Mumbai and even Goa. With two new airlines standing at the runway, it8217;s only going to get better. And if UT administrator Gen S F Rodrigues has his way, the city will also get an international airport.

The slow city has also become highly mobile. Mandeep Bhatia, COO, Airtel Punjab, says it set a record of sorts by becoming the first city in India to have more mobiles than landlines. Even today, it has the highest penetration of mobiles in the country and the lowest tariffs in the world, grins Bhatia, while warning of a correction in the near future. But as of now with all seven major mobile players fighting for a foothold, it8217;s as good as it gets for the consumer.

The hospitality industry has also never been so warm and welcoming. The city, which saw visitors going all the way upto Shimla in search of a bed during an international cricket series here in the late 8217;90s, now boasts of the 150-room Taj GVK and the lately five-starred Mountview. Anil Malhotra, general manager of Taj GVK, says with more and more MNCs moving to the city, the hospitality pie is only getting bigger. 8216;8216;We8217;re getting an overwhelming response, and I am sure it8217;s ditto for other new entrants,8217;8217; says Malhotra.

Not surprisingly, fine dining8212;hitherto considered alien in a city reared on tandoori chicken8212;is picking up fast. Almost every week sees a new restaurant chain in town, with many dropping Delhi in favour of Chandigarh in their expansion plan.

Entertainment, once considered the Achilles8217; heel of the city, has now become its plus point. With one multiplex in place, the city is now preparing to welcome four others. Night life, too, is rocking with a profusion of bars and cafes that remain awake till well past midnight.

With 2.62 vehicles per family8212;the highest per capita vehicles in the country8212;the city certainly lives in the fast lane. People here are very with-it when it comes to cars, says Ronnie Hoon, owner of Charisma Hyundai, who finds more and more people opting for finance to buy vehicles a cut above their pockets.

In fact, it8217;s the ease with which Chandigarhians loosen their purse strings that has big brands beating a path to the city. Darpan Kapoor, founder of Business Promotion Council BPC, says the city has always been the tops in matters of style. Sector 17 has arguably the highest concentration of brands in India, he says, partly because it caters to four states8212;Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and Jammu-Kashmir.

The region not only banks on the city for the brands but also for its finances. That explains why its the most banked city in the country with over 210 branches of 27 public sector and 12 private sector banks.

Besides wealth, the city takes good care of its health as well. While Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences and Research PGIMER is already a name to reckon with in the field of super-speciality care, now the city also boasts of big private players like Fortis and INSCOL.

Then, there is its fabled greenery. With 2,500 residential parks and over 7 lakh trees8212;7,000 saplings are planted every year8212;it8217;s easily greener than Bangalore.

Any wonder the IT superhighway8217;s heading to Chandigarh?

Next, an Assembly?
The flip side: population, politicisation and a final adieu to Le Corbusier

MANRAJ GREWAL

WHEN the Chandigarh administration okayed a 10-storey residential building in Sector 63 this year, it brought down yet another shibboleth that had gone into the making of City Beautiful. And now with local politicians clamouring for an Assembly, it may just be the beginning of the end of this Nehruvian dream.

The first planned city of the country, Chandigarh was conceived by Le Corbusier as an oasis of orderliness in the brick-and-mortar confusion that was India. Now with realtors hacking away at the city8217;s periphery8212;the 10-kilometre Lakshman Rekha that Corbusier had drawn around Chandigarh8212;the urban sprawl is just a window away.

The vertical growth in the new sectors has riven the city into two: the relatively untouched north with its sprawling, low-slung houses, and the feverish south, with its assembly-line flats and cramped roads. Dr Pramod Kumar, head, Institute of Development Communication IDC, calls it suicide at a young age.

The pressure of population8212;11 lakh today, up from 8 lakh in 20008212;has pushed up the real estate rates like never before: a 10-marla plot that cost Rs 35 lakh five years ago now sells for Rs 95 lakh. Unable to afford these prices, the people are taking over the periphery, heedless of illegalities.

The city is feeling the impact. Traffic jams, once unheard of, are commonplace, especially at points leading to the satellite cities of Mohali and Panchkula. Parking lots are full, and tempers are almost always on a short fuse.

The UT Administration8217;s 1971 policy to rehabilitate slum-dwellers has further aggravated the problem. Subsidised housing attracted a huge influx of migrants, says M N Sharma, the first chief architect of the city and Corbusier8217;s assistant.

The inflow is reflected in the demographic profile of the city. A study conducted by Dr Bindu Duggal of the Centre of Rural Research and Integrated Development CRRID in 1998 surmised that 20 per cent of the city8217;s population lived in the slums. This figure is said to have almost doubled now.

Now this number is telling not only on the city8217;s power situation but also on its balance of power. A report by Ernst 038; Young on the corporatisation of the UT electricity system said that the power department8217;s losses have mounted by Rs 63 crore in the last five years. The planners blame this on kundi connections used by slum-dwellers.

But its their impact on political equations that is threatening to make the city a victim of populism. In the last Lok Sabha elections, for instance, the slum colonies accounted for nearly 68 per cent of the votes. Some of the northern sectors polled as low as 10 per cent.

Satya Pal Jain, former BJP MP, who lost to the Congress8217; Pawan Kumar Bansal, the chief whip of the party in Parliament, attributes his defeat to the colonies. The Congress, he charges, has been playing votebank politics by encouraging illegal slums and constructions.

It8217;s a brush of accusations that all parties use to tar each other. The only time they unite is against the Administration, which continues to play a lead role in the city8217;s governance, despite the existence of a Municipal Corporation since 1996.

The resentment boiled over earlier this year when Deputy Commissioner Arun Kumar allegedly upset MP Bansal with a demolition drive in the Sector 26 grain market8212;a Congress stronghold8212;and the removal of market committee chairman Bhupinder Singh Badheri, a Congressman

Mayor Anu Chatrath also levelled charges of misbehaviour against the DC, who was finally replaced by R K Rao. The administration seemed to get its own back by depriving him of the powers of estate officer as well as excise and taxation commissioner for the first few days.

All of which have paved the way to the demand for an Assembly. BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, who visited the UT as chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on House Affairs last week, promised to consider the demand for a Vidhan Sabha.

The demand seems to have united Bansal and Jain. While Bansal alleges the Administration is not people-friendly, Jain says the people of Chandigarh 8216;8216;have their own aspirations8230; the city has become a laboratory for bureaucrats who have no stake in it8217;8217;.

But the Assembly is one prospect that makes many shudder. Then it will just be populism let loose, says an old-timer. And that will be the death of Corbusier8217;s city.

INTERVIEW

8216;Talent, facilities drew us here8217;
Infosys was the engine that drove Bangalore. Now, it8217;s investing several hundred crores in Chandigarh and proposing to employ 5,000 professionals for its 525,000 sq ft, export-oriented software unit . Regional head Sameer Goyal talks to Rohit Mullick

Why Chandigarh?
The most important reason is the proximity to Delhi. The city also has very good infrastructure and a very competitive educational environment. The roads are good and there is no power problem. The medical infrastructure is also highly developed here. Professionals will not face problems they might encounter elsewhere.

What is Chandigarh8217;s USP in comparison to Bangalore and Gurgaon?
Apart from the infrastructure, it8217;s the clean, pollution-free environment. The city is also young and there is so much talent here, thanks to the five universities in the region.

Did you face any problems while setting up your unit?
No, absolutely not. The UT Administration was very helpful. We did not face any red tape at all.

What improvements would you like to see in the city8217;s infrastructure?
With so many professionals expected in the city, further development will follow. I think the Administration should improve connectivity, even though Delhi is close by. Also, they should push hard for the upgradation of the city airport into an international airport.

Do you have expansion plans in Chandigarh?
We initially set up our unit in Mohali, so coming to Chandigarh was an expansion.