Cities On The Edge

Business Today has an excellent feature in its latest issue on how the economic boom is kiiling India's major cities. Needless to add Bangalore gets a major share of the stick. For the full article pick up the print edition or read it online at http://www.business-today.com (access to subscribers only)

BT SPECIAL Cities On The Edge

Favoured business destinations Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad could become, thanks to poor infrastructure, victims of their own success.

BANGALORE: The government of the fastest growing city in Asia believes providence, not planning will help it manage growth.

CHENNAI: India's hottest IT destination has water for all right now, thanks to plentiful rains, but dry taps are just a season away.

GURGAON: No public transport, no laws worth speaking of, yet more companies and individuals keep heading for this Delhi-satellite.

HYDERABAD: Business is yet to boom enough to make Hyderabad unlivable, but for a city its size, the air pollution is killing.

PUNE: With some 1.2 million vehicles on its roads (Mumbai has just a million), Pune is a commuter's nightmare.

On the first day of November this year, Bangalore celebrated Karnataka Rajyotsava, the anniversary of the formation of the state of Karnataka. Every year, the day is occasion for supra-chauvinists to bemoan the fact that the state's indigenous residents, the Kannadigas, are a minority in Bangalore. Some years, shop signs that are in English are daubed over with black paint by extremist elements of Kannada-organisations. This year, even the moderates signalled their unhappiness at the state of the city. "A mere 27 per cent of Bangaloreans are Kannadigas," says G. Narayan, a former mayor of Bangalore, and a former President of the Kannada Development Authority, an organisation that seeks to promote the Kannada language. "It is a tragedy that in the name of development, Kannadigas are being deprived of their rightful share."

The impending social fracture implied by Narayana is something Bangalore, a city of 7.2 million that stakes claim to being Asia's Silicon Valley, can ill afford. The city is already dying. That's right, you read it right the first time. Your city, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, even Gurgaon, is dying. Its arteries are choked with traffic, lungs corroded by pollutants, throat parched with thirst, and body labouring under a weight its heart cannot sustain.

New Delhi and Mumbai, the nation's political and commercial capitals, players in an all-too-Indian version of The Tale of Two Cities, the two largest cities in the country, cannot die. Kolkata, once the capital of British India, died in the 1990s and discovered an after-life involving a modicum of business, a mini real-estate boom-the huge out-of-Kolkata Bengali diaspora believes in buying a piece of condominium-paradise back home-and a full-fledged retail boom, attributable, in part, to Bangladesh's rich. No one, apart from the Government of Gujarat, talks of Ahmedabad any longer as a serious centre of business although this may have more to do with perception than fact. If you live in any of the other notable Indian cities, especially ones that are at the forefront of the economic boom the country finds itself in, however, we have news for you. Your city is dying. Victims of their own ability to attract investments, create jobs, and become dream-destinations for young professionals with dollar dreams in their eyes, they are, slowly but surely, choking. As Bob Hoekstra, the indophile CEO of Bangalore-based Philips Software who has just signalled his company's unwillingness to participate in it.com, a state government sponsored jamboree targeted at positioning Karnataka, and Bangalore, as the destination for it companies, puts it: "It is not right to attract more companies when the city does not have adequate infrastructure for the existing ones."

The faster these five cities grow, the closer they get to total systemic collapse

That's a problem that finds an echo across India's booming cities. If it isn't bad roads, it is power. And if the pollution does not get you, the lack of water sure will. "There is a perpetual shortage of 20-30 mw and the power goes off for three to four hours every day," complains A.H. Firodia, Chairman, Kinetic Engineering, a Pune-based two-wheeler manufacturer. "Growing traffic and pollution are a source of concern, and many times we have to think twice before venturing out," says B. Ramalinga Raju, Chairman of the Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services, one of India's largest software services firms. "There is adequate security inside the apartment-complexes (where we live)," says Arun Tadanki, CEO, Monster India, a jobs site, and the resident of an up-market condominium in Gurgaon, "but I would think twice before stepping out at night."

Chennai's show piece: India's first elevated railway will soon connect one extremity of the city to the other

Underlying such sentiments is growth. Pune, a favoured destination for software and automotive companies, is hot with the first growing by 40 per cent a year and the second, 20 per cent. As is Chennai, which has suddenly emerged a worthy rival to Bangalore. And Gurgaon expects to see the addition of some 3 million sq. ft. of office space and 5,000 apartments to its already crowded topography over the next two years.
Bangalore was showing the way, till a new government decided the city didn't matter

More people, more cars, more houses, and more service establishments (restaurants, hotels, malls) may help a city's economy in the short term, but in the absence of adequate planning, it could result in a collapse of civic machinery. That's only the beginning. Over time, it could result in the destruction of the social and economic fabric of the entire region surrounding the city. "Look at the village of Bavdhan," gestures Aneeta Beeninger, Director, Centre for Development Studies and Activities, Pune, from her office atop a hill overlooking the village. Bavdhan is a village recently annexed by a city on overdrive; the construction activity has already eaten away most of the hillside in clear violation of regulations. Bangalore's Commisioner of Police S. Mariswamy rues that he has a mere 2,800 traffic policemen to oversee a city of 17 lakh vehicles and seven million people. And B.P. Acharya, Managing Director of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, admits that "this year has been particularly bad with a 30 per cent to 40 per cent deficit in the catchment areas".

TRAVEL TRAVAILS
Our writers live the life of commuters in each of the five cities, albeit for a day.

BANGALORE: The Bangalore metropolitan transport corporation may claim its 3,207 buses make 45,000 trips a day, ferrying 28 lakh passengers to their destinations, but that doesn't reflect this writer's experience in getting from Jayanagar, a residential borough to Majestic Circle, the heart of the city's business district. First came the wait (a good 35 minutes); then, there were the crowds (it was impossible to board the first two buses that came my way); and finally, there was the quality of the ride. At the end of the 50-minute journey, I thanked the heavens I drove a car.

-Venkatesha Babu, Bangalore

CHENNAI: The MRTs is functional only in parts, so this correspondent takes a bus from Tiruvanmiyur, a happening residential area, to Arts College on Anna Salai, the heart of the business district. The 15-kilometre ride takes 50 minutes in peak morning traffic, which isn't so bad, but the hazards include over-crowded buses replete with eve teasers and pick-pockets (when I alight, I discover a neat slit at the base of my handbag and my purse, missing). Ten years ago, the local bus service was probably the best in India with no bus being more than five years old. Today, alas, the rot has set in.

-Nitya Varadarajan, Chennai

GURGAON: It is impossible to live without a car or two in Gurgaon. The only way you can get around the city-in-the-making is by auto-rickshaw, rickshaw, or by hitching a ride from Point A to Point B on an intra-state bus. The last is a function of the driver's generosity (there are no scheduled stops), so this writer braves it out in a rickshaw. It takes 10 minutes to get from IFFCO Chowk, a main intersection to DLF Square, where lots of companies have their offices. The pollution is killing and part of the journey is completed on the wrong side of the road.

-Kushan Mitra, Gurgaon

HYDERABAD: the first thing that strikes you about an APSRTC (Andhra Pradesh State Transport Corporation) bus ride is the pace. A ride from Mosapet to Begumpet, a distance of 7 kilometres, takes 25 minutes, an impressive average of 16.8 km/hour. And this is a faster Metroliner bus, not a slower ordinary one. Another problem is frequency. If you're travelling between two points on the highway (that's NH 9), you get a bus every five minutes; otherwise, you're in for a 30-minute wait. The only plus point: even on a working day, the bus is not packed, so the journey is comfortable. Not for women though. Occasional eve-teasing and no reserved seats (in reality, not theory), a sprightly 25-year-old lady confides to this correspondent, has prompted her to learn to ride a two-wheeler.

-E. Kumar Sharma, Hyderabad

PUNE: for someone spoilt by Mumbai's efficient best bus-service, the 15-minute, four-kilometer ride from Model Colony, a residential area, to the Pune Muncipal Corporation HQ in the city centre is a revelation. Lesson 1: you need to flag a bus down even if you are standing at a bus stop. Lesson 2: You can enter and exit through either door, front or rear. Lesson 3: No one takes a bus in Pune if they can avoid it.

-Priya Srinivasan, Pune

Worse, the wealth factor has resulted in an immigrant boom: with business booming, people are earning more than ever before, and apart from investing in homes, cars and consumer durables, also looking to improve the quality of their lives by hiring more servants, thereby attracting unskilled labour by the droves to these cities. The result is an increase in the number and size of slums, even total collapse of the law and order machinery and basic civic amenities in certain parts of these cities. Money, or the lack of it, cannot really be an excuse. "I would think all major developers would have thus far contributed just under Rs 1,000 crore to the Haryana Government in the form of external development charges (EDC)," says Sanjay Chandra, Director, Unitech, a real-estate developer. The question hidden in his statement: what has happened to the money? In response, Dinesh Chauhan, District Town Planner, Haryana Urban Development Authority, claims private developers are responsible for the mess that is Gurgaon by "expanding faster than the city administration can cope". Just how bad is the problem? "Gurgaon cannot treat more than 20 per cent of the sewage it generates and can barely meet 50 per cent of peak power demand," explains a senior executive at another real-estate development firm.

The gold rush: Big cities attract immigrants by the trainload

Today, none of the five cities in question can claim to have an integrated approach to urban planning. Sharad Mahajan, a town-planner and architect who works with Mashal, a Pune-based non governmental organisation that works in the area of environmental conservation, points out that Pune has not had a town-planning exercise since 1970. All development since, he adds, has been through instruments such as Transfer of Development Rights and Accomodation Reservation, tools that facilitate ad hoc acquisition of land.

It is fairly easy to predict the long-term impact of the absence of an organised approach to urban planning. In Guragon's case, for instance, says Patu Keswani, the CEO of Krizm Hotels (he has just opened a budget hotel, Lemon Tree, in the city) "the more labour intensive industries will move to Manesar," a town a few kilometres down the Delhi-Jaipur road from Gurgaon. And in Bangalore's case, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji has already said the bulk of his company's growth (in people terms) will be outside the city.

There is an even more important aspect to urban planning: it has to be inclusive and cannot ignore the interests of those people whose lives will be touched by the growth of the city. The Karnataka Government did so and farmers in the village of Belandur near Bangalore have taken it to court over the acquisition of land for an IT Corridor. "Why should the state government forcibly acquire our agricultural land that has been handed down from generation to generation?" asks Bargur Muniyappa, a farmer. "Neither we nor our children will benefit from all this computer stuff."

IMMIGRANT SONG
The wanting infrastructure of cities is stretched thin by immigrants.
Delhi and Mumbai have problems all their own related to immigrants-the former attracts an average of 800 people a day in search of better livelihoods; the latter, 200 people a day-but these pale into insignificance when compared to those of cities such as Bangalore, Pune and Chennai. The main difference is what the CEO of a Bangalore-based it major calls "the wealth effect". The rich (and that description includes the salaried masses that work for it and it-enabled services companies) make more demands of a city's infrastructure, in terms of space (real-estate, parking and road-length) and utilities (power and water), something that Chennai, Bangalore and Pune, the new Meccas of organised-sector employment, are discovering the hard way. The Chinese have their own way of dealing with this, a clinical work-permit and quota-driven regime. That isn't as inclusive or ideal a solution as improving the quality of life for all, the rather lofty aim of this country; then, it works.