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| Changing Equations in Real Estate |
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At ILS 2008, the Real Estate and Infrastructure Club at the ISB organised a panel discussion on ‘Urbanisation in India – The Changing Equation’. The panel comprised eminent people associated with urban planning and development who spoke on the various ills inherent in the current urbanisation drive of the Indian cities. They then went on to suggest viable options to make the growth pattern more sustainable and within the reach of larger numbers of people. Karuna Gopal, Director and India head of Confluence Consulting, Futurecities.Org; Prasad Koneru, MD, Rakindo Developers and Dr PS Rana, Chairman Trikona Development were part of the panel.
 The discussion started off on an interesting note with Gopal highlighting the need for more thriving, happening cities by saying that “any vibrant economy has vibrant cities.” She quoted Kofi Annan by saying that out of the 10 largest Asian cities to emerge in near future, three major cities would be from India. She drove home the point that imbalanced development meant losing out on development. “Sheer opulence on one end juxtaposed with abject poverty on the other was detrimental for a city’s growth,” she said. She also stressed the need for cities to behave like companies when it came to grabbing business investments and quoted how Chennai won over Hyderabad due to better infrastructure facilities. “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist,” Gopal opined about the government’s involvement and said that there was need to fill the ability and attitude gap. She concluded by quoting Einstein, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge,’ and hoped that management graduates would tap the potential available in infrastructure development and become the developers of future vibrant Indian cities.
After an overview from Gopal, Dr Rana, who has been on many government panels, gave some fodder for thought by presenting a PURA model for urbanization in India. Though currently, the urban growth rate is expected to be 40% by 2031, he said that two-thirds of India would be urban by the year 2025. He envisaged development of self contained townships along linear rail corridors. The need of the hour Rana said was, “good towns with good infrastructure and not mega cities, as most of us tend to believe.” He elaborated on how the cities and their development could sustain villages, instead of villages surrounding cities. Examples of Tada in AP, coastal Puras along Nagapatnam coastline were put forth to sustain his argument. All this, in turn would also put the land prices in check, he added. Talking on similar lines was Koneru. Being a private developer, he naturally spoke of how self sustained integrated townships were the key for urbanisation in India. Koneru spoke of how this would in turn lead to reverse migration from cities to integrated townships. Later, the panel pointed out how Taiwan was a classic example for India to follow to initiate economic activity at the grassroots level. All the three panellists commonly endorsed that the role of the government was to regulate policies and not to control businesses. They said the road to progress and urbanisation would be cleared only when the government left managing businesses to private sector and it looked into providing law and order and chalk out clear-cut policies.
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