The Changing face of Punjab

Punjabis by nature are fun-loving folks. They like to eat well, wear well and live well. Fresh with Partition pangs, some of the more adventurous Punjabis left the shores of India in ’50s to search greener pastures in several parts of the World, including the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. They toiled hard in the agricultural fields, factories, academics and professional offices of their adopted countries.

They were the first to adopt the concept of farmhouses on Punjab’s countryside as holiday vista. Then came the turbulent ’80s and the start of the decade and a half long period of insurgency. Spacious farmhouses became the hiding places for the militants. Some were occupied by the police while the others were inhabited by the migrants from UP and Bihar.

The insurgency rendered village life virtually impossible. The well-to-do farmers decided to move to the cities. This created tremendous pressure on the cities. Most of the cities, to start with, were unplanned.

Urban planning was restricted only to Chandigarh, its satellite township, Mohali, and a few urban estates built in the handful of cities. The rest was unplanned and haphazard. That is why cities like Amritsar and Ludhiana are suffering from urban blight. In most of the unplanned colonies, civic amenities are woefully inadequate.

Post-militancy period between 1996 and 2006 can be termed as the decade of renaissance in Punjab. The NRI-rich Grand Trunk region of Punjab had a tremendous latent potential for planned urban development, but for a long time it did not occur to India’s metropolitan area based builders and the authorities in Punjab to assess the magnitude of this potential.

Ludhiana, as an exception, had some housing projects that started nearly a decade ago, but no big land developer based in Mumbai or Delhi noticed that the other cities in Punjab also could afford big city style planned housing. Thus, most of the Punjab remained untouched by the planned housing explosion.

Real urban housing boom in most of Punjab started only four years ago. Some of the big builders of the National Capital Region made a reluctant and speculative entry into Punjab. They tasted instant success and by word of mouth, the news spread like a wildfire and other builders also made a beeline to Punjab.

The state government was receptive and the tax laws for dwellings were the most favourable in India. All this heralded the birth of planned small enclave multi-storeyed construction.

Mohali became the flag-bearer of the present day building boom in Punjab. Quark company of the USA was allotted a specific chunk of land to develop. This move was a departure from the Chandigarh style urban pattern adopted by the Punjab Urban Development Authority. Soon other developers jumped into the fray and the state government also shed its inertia. Thus Mohali became the first township in Punjab to deviate from Le Corbusier’s standard concept of urban planning.

Some smaller private developers, of course with the blessings of the authorities, started building their own enclaves in places like Zirakpur, Kharar, Banur and Rajpura. The same concept has been extended to Mohali in a big way. Now Mumbai style urban development is spreading into all cities of Punjab.

Amritsar’s International Airport, spurred by the Golden Temple-centric pilgrimage and NRI-driven tourism, has seen an unprecedented growth during the last three years. From merely a dozen international flights a week, it has grown to handle approximately eighty international flights a week. This factor alone has done tremendous good to Amritsar’s moribund economy. Amritsar is now graduating into a city of 5-star hotels.

Several big land developers are building all kinds of residential and commercial buildings. This appears to be just the beginning of the boom, a lot more seems yet to come.

Four laning of Amritsar-Jalandhar Highway, Amritsar-Pathankot Highway and Amritsar-Wagha Highway are also helpful, because most of the new planned urban enclaves are coming up on these very roads. The additional limited access elevated highway being built above the most congested part of the Grand Trunk Road, offering a hassle free connection the Golden Temple, is going to further enhance the status of this city.

Now other cities in Punjab, with less than a million population, are also experiencing a housing boom. Jalandhar and Kapurthala constitute the heart of NRI belt. The highway linking Jalandhar with Kapurthala has three prestigious institutions located on it in close proximity to each other.

The Punjab Technical University, the Swaran Singh National Institute of Renewable Energy and the Pushpa Gujral Science City are all closely clustered along this road. This pristine area is a prime location for high-end urban development. The Jalandhar Phagwara section of the Grand Trunk Road is also developing very fast.

According to an estimate during the coming three years or so nearly Rs 130 lakh crores is going to be invested by big builders in Punjab and Haryana.

The increased land prices are a blessing in disguise as the farmers will get more for their prime land.

Source: Tribuneindia.com