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Let Pune's Magarpatta show the way

February 20, 2008 08:53 IST

The Magarpatta Township Project in Pune is a case study today in 'inclusive' development. About 120 farmers came together to be masters of their own economic destiny. They pooled around 400 acres of their ancestral land on the fringes of Pune city and proposed the rather revolutionary idea that they would together develop 'Magarpatta City', an innovative mixed-use township.

The Pune Municipal Corporation, first shocked out of its wits, ultimately bowed to the power of the idea and the passion of its proponents.

In an epochal meeting in 1993, all the landowners contributed their land into a development company and accepted the principle of proportionate shareholding.

The rest, they say, is history.

With glistening office blocks ringed around a central parkland, the radiating concentric circles have housing environs and residential communes with a 'walk-to-work' philosophy. Enhancing the quality of life are world-class sporting facilities, gyms, and shopping and entertainment arcades. Few would guess, looking at the state-of-the-art development, that a farming community achieved all this on their own.

It is important to understand how this phenomenon occurred and what the constellation of circumstances were that came together. More importantly, it is worth examining whether these circumstances are replicable in the rest of the country wherever age-old agricultural land is threatened with non-agricultural developmental uses.

Let us try and understand these forces and circumstances a little better:

Obviously No, if the above conditions do not hold. Also no:

In most cases where land is required for large format infrastructure projects, there will still be no substitute for pro-active external interventions in resettlement and rehabilitation efforts. This is because it does seem unlikely that most parts of rural India can throw up the enriching and heady cocktail of circumstances that can make a Magarpatta happen. But let us celebrate the fact that in one city in India, it did.

Cheers!

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The author is the chairman of Feedback Ventures. He is also the co-chairman of CII's National Council on Infrastructure. The views expressed are personal

Vinayak Chatterjee
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