The Big range

Rs 3,150-crore Multimodal International Hub Airport at Nagpur (MIHAN). “I work long hours but still have time for friends, for travelling. The food is great, the people are nice. In Mumbai, you spend three hours commuting everyday. Reduce that to half-an-hour. Imagine the quality of life then.”

But tranquil evenings could hardly have drawn Boeing, Wipro, Satyam Computers, HCL, L&T, DLF and Ispat to Nagpur, until now known as a 300-year-old city with a rich history, capital of neglected Vidarbha. Suddenly, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India is checking how many of its degree holders may be required in an SEZ adjoining MIHAN, technical college principals are asking which diplomas and degrees will be in demand, placement firms are gearing up and IT students are cancelling migration plans.

And it’s all thanks to a plan not attempted anywhere in India, a plan to turn what has been the heart of the country, India’s ‘zero-point’, into a hub of international cargo movement with a multi-product Special Economic Zone (SEZ) adjacent, both to be operational less than two years from now. In the 4,354-hectare project area being planned and executed by government undertaking Maharashtra Airport Development Company Ltd (MADC) will be extra length for the existing runway to welcome the world’s biggest aircraft, the Airbus A 380; an additional airstrip located 1.6 km from the existing one, 4,000 metre long and 60 metre wide; and standing between them will be the country’s largest terminal building at 3 million square feet. Over 100 aircraft will be parked at any time, up from the current five. According to a techno-economic feasibility report, the projected passenger traffic is 14 million people per annum and 8.7 lakh tonnes of cargo traffic per annum by 2035. Adjacent will be the 2,086-hectare SEZ, for export-oriented units like IT, gems and jewellery, garments, electronic goods, pharmaceuticals and processed foods. The buzz about Nagpur is now a roar.

So, what does Nagpur offer that other cities don’t? Additional Chief Secretary

R C Sinha, vice-chairman and managing director of the Maharashtra Airport Development Company Ltd, asked himself that question at a recent conference. “Oranges? Yes, but something more as well,” he said.

While there is connectivity by air, road and rail to all parts of India, the city also occupies a strategic central point in international aviation routes; the country’s busiest ATC point is also immense potential for cargo hubbing with destinations in all directions—Europe, the CIS, Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. With 27 engineering colleges and 8,700 graduates yearly—almost 80 per cent of them looking outside Nagpur for jobs, there is enormous human resource potential just within the city.

That’s why the facilities within the walled SEZ will cater to the world’s best corporates. “There will be a dual water supply system,” says S V Chahande, chief engineer of MADC, “separate lines for potable and non-potable water, along with a waste water treatment plant.” Also on the drawing board: An exhibition-cum-convention centre with a hotel and shopping area designed by Hafeez Contractor, a central facility building to be built by Shapoorji Pallonji. And all this infrastructure will be ready by December 2008, promises Sinha, the bureaucrat who supervised the construction of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and who has been personally marketing the idea of Nagpur and MIHAN to global IT biggies for months now.

But it is Prem Assija, senior vice-president (Corporate) of HCL Technologies which has signed up for 140 acres of land at the SEZ, who puts Nagpur’s attraction in perspective. “There is tremendous pressure on the profit margins of IT companies,” he says, explaining the impact of the weaker dollar. As salaries and real estate prices rise, IT firms have had 10 per cent profits knocked out in four months, 15 per cent in the last 12 months. “It makes sense to go to Tier II towns,” says Assija, who’s in charge of setting up HCL campuses and is incidentally a former Nagpurite. “Also, we feel there is a large untapped pool of talent here, going elsewhere for jobs.”

BUT while MIHAN—or more precisely, the SEZ—is piloting Nagpur’s big overhaul, there is a parallel civic inventiveness attempting to sustain that growth, readying for the pressure on the city’s infrastructure.

A Rs 5,894-cr five-year investment plan is detailed in Nagpur’s City Development Plan, submitted under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Incidentally, Nagpur was the first city in the country to receive funds under JNNURM. For transportation, there is a 30-year masterplan for roads, foot overbridges and road overbridges, says Municipal Commissioner Lokesh Chandra. A detailed project report on two proposed Bus Rapid Transit Projects along 40 km is being drawn up for submission under JNNURM and a German joint venture firm has proposed a monorail. “Already, the City Bus service has been started as a unique PPP initiative, with 200 brand new buses ferrying commuters within the city,” says Chandra. There are a series of other initiatives—six shopping malls on BOT basis, a GIS mapping underway for property tax assessment and a pilot project by for 24 x 7 water supply.

All this means real estate is suddenly a speculative market, with prices ranging from Rs 1,500 per sq ft to Rs 5,000 per sq ft, unheard of a year ago. Served by NH-7 and NH-6, it seems that Nagpur’s central location is finally getting its due. Not long ago, a Bombay High Court judge sold his 41-acre plot abutting the Nagpur-Wardha Road and the MIHAN and SEZ areas for Rs 105 crore, a whopping Rs 2.5-crore per acre. The buyer was garment major Provogue group-promoted Hagwood Commercial Developers, expected to build a township on the land.

“Quality township projects are the next big thing here, a bungalow at the cost of an expensive flat in the best areas, with amenities of international levels—security, emergency services, etc,” says Nagpur’s most prominent builder Nandkumar Archandani, better known as N Kumar. Having built most of the city’s taller buildings and its biggest mall-multiplex, Archandani—he has had his share of legal wrangling, another big city trait—says Nagpur can provide the same quality of life as in Bangalore, but at a lower cost. “Which would you pick then?”

His “mall culture” is welcome, especially to youngsters. “It’s developing fast, very fast,” says Nitin Soni (18), a regular at the city’s new coffee shops, the sprawling theme gardens and a lakeside they call Chowpatty, a reference to Mumbai’s seafronts. “It’s fabulous to see so much change, but we’re still not a mini-Mumbai,” he adds. For, he still cycles to college or hitches a ride with a friend, then often returns home to the tedium of load-shedding. There will also be an inevitable struggle on CNG enforcement and an unplanned sewage system releasing two-thirds of its contents minus any treatment into natural courses must be overhauled.

Clearly, broad roads—credited mostly to former civic commissioner T Chandrashekhar—and lush cityscapes don’t make a Tier I city. According to Dhananjay Deodhar, owner of The Great Maratha, a hotel in the MIDC area at Hingna Road with a permit room, rooms, banquet halls and a strobe-lit dance floor lying vacant for two years now, the authorities need to loosen up a bit. “I can’t even sell a cup of coffee to those leaving midnight shifts from nextdoor units,” he complains about his 24-hour coffee shop licence being revoked. Ditto for his orchestra performance licence and those of several others in the disco-pub-‘‘dancing floor” industry. Orchestras, DJs and dancing is now permitted only in hotels that have at least a three-star rating, which means Nagpur has barely a handful of pubs, no discotheques worth mentioning and a host of irked dance-bar owners with idling investments.

But not many entrepreneurs are complaining. As Sinha says, “With 1,25,000 jobs to be created in five years, (5 lakh if you add indirect employment opportunities in the hotels, salons, tailoring shops, eateries, laundries and shops) an estimated Rs 2,400 crore in monthly salaries will be thrust into the economy…There will be an increased demand for new vehicle showrooms, vehicle dealerships and garages to maintain them, airconditioner mechanics, drivers, electricians…” About 10 crore sq ft of construction in MIHAN and the SEZ area means thousands of masons, carpenters, plumbers, painters will be required. Now it’s up to Vidarbha’s people to make themselves employable, he stresses. “Are our technical institutes ready?”

That’s why, young Soni is studying computer science; he even knows somebody who returned from Bangalore for a job at Nagpur’s own software park. “IT is the best bet in Nagpur now,” he says. “It’s a good career plan.”

Planning is key, Chandra agrees. “There is potential, we could be the growth nucleus for all of central India and especially Vidarbha, but we must continue planning ahead.”

Despite that, in Nagpur today, everybody follows the same script. Deodhar says his erstwhile bar dancers in Nagpur included people from every caste and community; Archandani also stresses on a cosmopolitan city welcoming his malls. Jayaswal, whose family—the NECO group—has seen the old industry and is now entering the new, points out that Vidarbha’s political clout has changed. Sinha agrees: MLAs and MPs across parties support MIHAN as a “no-politicking” area, an infrastructure project, not to be trifled with. Finally, diverse stakeholders are on the same page.

“Nagpur would really have to goof up now to not become the topmost hub for infotech companies,” says an upbeat Jayaswal. Unlike Mumbai—or Pune or Bangalore for that matter—its administrators are planning before cracks appear. At the heart of New India, it is a promising glow.

mission metro
Under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, Nagpur is expecting as much as Rs 1,538 crore in Central grants for a number of infrastructure projects being undertaken by the Nagpur Municipal Corporation.
Water supply and distribution projects, with the long term aim of water for all, including energy and water audits, source augmentation, improved connectivity and efficiency of supply networks: Rs 590 crore
Sewerage projects including new lines, rehabilitation of old sewers and sewage treatment plants to cater to 100 per cent of the 380 million litres daily sewage generated. Currently, only 100 mld is treated, the rest disposed into natural water courses and drains untreated: Rs 515 crore
Storm water drains overhaul, to tackle flooding and to rejuvenate the Nag and Pilli rivers that connect a nullah network. Currently, only 35 per cent of the city’s roads have integrated storm water drains, many of these choking due to sewage and garbage in them: Rs 246 crore
Solid waste management schemes, aiming at a ‘bin-free city’ will include door to door garbage collection, developing scientific transfer stations and developing a scientifically managed landfill site: Rs 50 crore
A masterplan for roads includes an outer ring road (Rs 682 crore), road widening and improvement
(Rs 200 crore), 10 flyovers
(Rs 100 crore), seven road
overbridges (Rs 128 crore) and three bridges across rivers (Rs 7.6 crore)

Praful Patel, Union Minister for Civil Aviation and Rajya Sabha MP, who belongs to Vidarbha, on Nagpur:
“We are pushing Nagpur and MIHAN very aggressively, mentioning even in the Civil Aviation Policy that Nagpur—only Nagpur—will be the cargo hub for the country. The Union Civil Aviation Ministry is driving the growth of Nagpur as a cargo hub. For example, Boeing was directed to Nagpur for their MRO, mandated in the deal for Air India’s Boeing aircraft. Indian Airlines’ cargo hub will also now be at Nagpur. We have also turned Nagpur airport into an international one—flights to Bangkok and Dubai have already started from here, flights to Singapore and Doha will be starting later this year.
The ministry is pushing development towards Nagpur, talking to global cargo majors like Fedex and DHL. However, the state Government must act more speedily on issues like land acquisition. That way, we can get the best benefit of the aviation minister belonging to the region.”