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Two
years ago, Chandigarh joined the bandwagon of Indian cities
aiming to becoming IT meccas. Those dreams ended in shambles,
thanks to government apathy. But the new administration has
new plans up its sleeve and is going all out in a do-or-die
effort, says Vineet Joshi
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J
F R JACOB says his single-point agenda is to create
wealth for Chandigarh and its citizens |
Once
the dream venture of French architect Le Corbusier who designed
the city in the year 1952, Chandigarh the first planned city
of independent India is today a dream venture for the 78-year
old Governor of Punjab and city administrator of Chandigarh,
Lt Gen J F R Jacob and his team of enthusiastic officials
who call themselves a ‘corporate body’ within a
government all because they envision Chandigarh as the next
IT destination in India.
The countdown for this has begun and this means a virtual
overhaul of many things in the city. The single-point objective
is to transform the city on all fronts, be it power, transport,
roads, water, education, housing or recreation, so as to become
the darling of IT companies and attract the best of talent.
The master plan is divided into a five-point agenda:
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Oiling associated infrastructure like transport, roads,
power, housing, health, and recreation.
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Laying a high capacity broadband network criss-crossing
the entire state.
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Setting up an IT park and providing land, office space,
necessary infrastructure and tax concessions in a single
window clearance format.
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Transforming all government functioning and operations through
e-governance completely obliterating red-tapism from the
system.
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Sprucing up the education system of the region to churn
out qualified IT professionals, and marketing Chandigarh
in India and abroad to attract the best in the industry.
The budget for all this? Whatever it takes to transform Chandigarh
into a hi-tech city with the desired civic, education and
recreation amenities. “We are not competing with other
cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc. We are moving with
the single-point agenda of generating wealth for the city
and its people. And the first step for reaching this goal
is to improve infrastructure, the education system and provide
good quality of life to people residing in the city,”
says Gen. Jacob. In fact, he puts the entire exercise of “upgradation
and overhauling” the city as a very “simple act”
often made complex by unnecessary rules and regulations and
political pressure.
It’s not that Chandigarh hasn’t tried to tap the
IT opportunity. Two years ago, in the year 1999, the city
tried riding the IT wave but apparently lost its way somewhere
in the middle of 2000 due to the slowdown in the economy,
bureaucratic hassles, slack marketing and implementation of
policies. Today it is standing at the threshold of yet another
attempt to relive the dream. But the approach, this time,
is what officials call foolproof proactive and all-encompassing.
As a first step the state has come out with an IT policy and
an IT Task Force. The policy specifies clear-cut norms for
approvals, sanctions, registrations, investments, etc. As
per the policy, all proposals and investments related to IT
will go through a single window clearance and can avail of
the benefits of income tax concessions and waiver from other
levies. The government has also announced several fiscal and
monetary incentives to make IT investments easy and attractive.
The special task force will enable speedy transfer and occupancy.
The state administration has also cleared the setting up of
an IT Park spread across 104 acres of land near Kishan Ganj,
Chandigarh. “Situated around 4 kms from the Punjab &
Haryana Secretariat and 2 kms from the golf course, the IT
Park is located at the heart of the city and yet away from
the hustle-bustle of town. Initially we plan to promote Chandigarh
as a prime destination in North India and then market the
city on all-India basis,” says Karan A Singh, finance
secretary, Chandigarh Administration.
The government has already invited applications from major
IT companies like Wipro, Satyam, TCS, Infosys and General
Electric, and has got in excess of 25 responses. It is understood
that Infosys has already applied for an expression of interest
and is in the final stages of buying the land in the IT Park.
“We are in the process of scrutinising applications based
on our parameters and will take a couple of months to allocate
the land. Our focus is to give the land to IT companies in
hard core software development, and IT enabled companies,”
informs Vivek Atray, director-IT, Chandigarh Administration.
The government has also invited all the major infrastructure
companies for wiring up the entire city. Under the first phase,
HFCL, Spectranet and Power Grid have already laid 80 km of
OFC across the city. Two other companies Bharti and Reliance,
have started laying OFC in the second phase of infrastructure
development.
The administration has already computerised all the major
departments like police, excise and sale, licensing, income
tax, etc. Soon the departments will start functioning online
and have citizen-government interfaces. It is understood that
by the end of 2002, all government departments will be computerised.
But what about the problem of sourcing high-end quality IT
professionals which seems to be the problem staring right
at the face of Chandigarh administration at the moment. The
short term plan, which will fulfill immediate requirements,
will encompass upgrading all polytechnics in the state to
provide high-end courses; start engineering degree courses
in polytechnics after revamping infrastructure and faculty;
introducing additional IT courses, and also increasing the
seats of existing IT courses in Punjab University; and getting
deemed university status under the World Bank Scheme for Punjab
Engineering College (PEC). The long-term plan includes setting
up of an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)
and also approaching private training institutes for setting
up education infrastructure of international standards one
such example is the Canadian Institute of Computer Science
and Technology (CICST) set up by Georgian University, Canada,
set up in Mohali, near Chandigarh.
“Simply
opening up the economy, providing adequate space to IT companies
and proactive policies are no longer enough. We need to develop
attractive configurations of locational advantages for investors.
Here what is required is to provide all civic, cultural and
social amenities to professionals. Our aim is to provide quality
of life so as to attract and retain human resources,”
says Jacob.
But, not everyone believes that the city can undergo such
a sudden transformation. The timing may act as a major blockade
for progress. Chandigarh is experimenting with the “IT
city” concept at a time when most IT companies are passing
through a lean patch and shying away from any new investments.
“IT companies do not simply come in and invest. Chandigarh
failed to capitalise on the IT boom that happened two years
back because of bureaucratic hassles and policy problems.
Today, the task ahead for Chandigarh administration is something
like running against the wind. Even if the transformation
happens it will take a lot of time and consistent efforts.
Any break in effort will jeopardise the whole effort,”
says Bal V Sehgal, executive director, Quark Media House (India),
the Indian development arm of Quark, the global publishing
software major, and one of the biggest software operations
running in Chandigarh today.
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