Look south-west to set up shop

Look south-west to set up shop
Govt Plan To Woo Investors
The Times of India

Bangalore: In an effort to counter the ‘no-infrastructure’ battle-cry raised by IT and other industries, the state government has come up with a new option: Shift office to Bangalore’s south-west.

The place on offer is a brand new, better equipped and designed 250-acre industrial estate at Harohalli, between Kanakapura and Mysore roads. The aim: decongest the IT\industry heavy corridor from Whitefield to Electronic City (Bangalore East to South), which has become a traffic and logistical nightmare for the city.

The visible reason for the new estate is political — it is coming up in industries minister P.G.R. Sindhia’s assembly constituency of Kanakapura. But officials argue that it will serve its purpose as a counter-magnet.

“Land in Harohalli area is cheap. The estate will be well-connected by two state highways — the newly four-laned Bangalore-Mysore SH and the Kanakapura SH, making traffic flow very easy,’’ Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) CEO B.A. Harish Gowda told The Times of India.

KIADB is applying lessons learnt from the haphazard IT growth. The government, almost at its wit’s end for land in the East to South arc, has sought to shift new investments out of this area to the planned and developing south-west zone.
Land in Harohalli and the existing KIADB estate in Dobbespet is being dangled before the IT industry, but the latter is still reluctant to shift.

So, the decongestion plan is: Preventing further crowding from the booming manufacturing sector, by moving them to the south-west area, with infrastructure on par with IT.

“Further IT investment can be pushed to Mysore and Mangalore, while we keep this estate for core manufacturing units. IT is welcome, but manufacturing is more job-intensive and will help economic growth in that backward area,’’ Sindhia said.

With Bidadi already an automobile and manufacturing hub, KIADB feels that Harohalli estate will extend the sprawl to a fullfledged zone. There is lots of potential for growth as land is available all around the presently notified 250 acres.

In fact, the idea has caught on: the printing industry in Bangalore has shown interest in moving out en masse from the congested Chikpet-Chamarajpet area and set up a umbrella ‘printing park’ there. And with the BWSSB water pipeline running next to the estate, water-based industries are also keen.