Pune: Defence body moots handing over of 4 road stretches to PMC

Shweta Desai, Express India

Civic authority to compensate defence by way of cash-cum-amenities package

Pune, September 5: THE Defence Estate office of the Pune Circle has put up a proposal suggesting that four road stretches passing through defence land and aggregating some 72,000 sq metres, be handed over to the Pune Municipal Corporation for road widening projects. The PMC on its part has been for a while been demanding that all 14 roads passing through various establishments be handed over to them. There will not be any transfer of land ownership but it would only be leased out to the civic authority, it is understood.

As per the proposal, the PMC would compensate the Defence for loss of land by way of cash-cum-amenities offer. The cost of the land of all the 14 roads stretches aggregating two lakh sq metres is estimated at Rs 50 crore, though the authorities are yet to make a valuation of the four road stretches.

Says Defence Estate Officer Sewak Nayyar, ‘‘We have forwarded the proposal for four roads to the Director General, Defence Estate, C R Mohapatra. Currently the proposals are at the scrutiny level after which they would be sent to the Ministry of Defence for final approval. The defence authorities would still have the ownership of the land.’’

The road stretches include: Pune Nagar road, Yerwada (survey number 202, 205), Sangamwadi to Sadalbaba chowk, Yerwada (survey number 28,31 to 44), Pune-Alandi road, Yerwada (survey number 84, 86, 94) and Nagar road to Airport (VIP) road, Yerwada, Lohegaon (survey number 233, 204).

For transferring or leasing out the defence land to another authority, an NOC is required at two levels: Local Military Authority and the Defence Estate. In case of these four roads, the defence estate has already forwarded the proposals to the director general while the station head quarters of Khadki and Pune too have given their NOCs in this regard.

Bangalore best to live in ?

GEETHA RAO
[ 6 Sep, 2006 2239hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

This city tops the list for quality of life. Is that really true?

A recent study across Indian cities had people saying Bangalore's the best city to live in and the second best to earn in. Is that really so? BT asked Bangaloreans who'd lived in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.

Wildlife expert Saad Bin Jung lived in Hyderabad for 22 years, followed by Bangalore for 22 years, and says, "The weather in Bangalore was fantastic then. And the quality of life, the best. Now, the very people who have destroyed Bangalore are making politically correct noises about putting it back on track again. It's like wildlife. First you finish the animals and then try to bring them back again. Bangalore's been destroyed by a small percentage that's gained dramatically by it, but there's nothing for the common man, like me, today. You can't change Bangalore because those who have benefitted by it are extremely powerful. Bangalore was a thousand times better than Hyderabad earlier."

Hyderabad, he says, is a very old and civilised city and the people care enough for the city to reinvent it. "But in Bangalore, there are too many people from outside who have settled here, and don't care for the city." Opportunities-wise, Bangalore and Hyderabad are similar.

Chippy Gangjee, who's lived in Kolkata before he moved to Bangalore 22 years ago says Bangalore weather's the best.

"But if the infrastructure was as good as in SM Krishna's time, it'd be even better to live here. We may crib like hell about the traffic, but go to another city, and you just want to come running back."

Gangjee deals with some of the worst roads in LB Shastrinagar where he lives: "They are horrendous, I travel on them some four times a day, yet the amount of peace that Bangalore offers is something you can't get anywhere."

And the people. In Chippy Gangjee's apartment block, there are a dozen Bengali families among the 200 living there and 30-40 more in the locality, but both Bengalis and non-Bengalis have decided to celebrate Durga Puja together. "People are so cosmopolitan," he says.

However, Kolkata is less expensive: "a great city, costwise, whether it's vegetables or rentals or eating out."

Gagan Bindra, marketing manager with a multiplex, who's lived in Delhi for seven years, and Bangalore for six, says Delhi being the capital, has the edge in terms of infrastructure.

"I'm not saying Delhi's perfect, but you can see a lot of development. Now with the Commonwealth Games coming to Delhi, there's even more focus on infrastructure."

And traffic? Bindra says, "Even if you are caught in a traffic jam in Bangalore, it's much better than being caught in the scorching heat in Delhi."

And the people here are welcoming of outsiders, he says. In Delhi, more or less, the attitude is we belong here, may be we know better than you do. Danseuse Vani Ganapathy who's travelling constantly to Mumbai says what we lack here is discipline.

"I was in Mumbai during Janmashtami, which is celebrated in a grand manner there. Despite that, there was disciplined traffic movement. I stay in Chennai only for two days so I don't really know, but my cousins there say it's quite calm. Here, though, I was caught in the traffic jam during Sonia Gandhi's visit, and there was chaos. Some hooligans actually turned on the police."

Pune: Menace of ragging

[ 4 Sep, 2006 0139hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

PUNE: A first-year medical student of the B.J. Medical College (BJMC) was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Sassoon Hospital here on Sunday after he was allegedly ragged by his seniors at the college hostel.

Seventeen-year-old Akhilesh Shukla, who hails from Raipur in Chhattisgarh and had joined the college recently, was reportedly forced to do sit-ups for an inordinately long time that left him exhausted.

He was taken to the hospital where he was diagnosed as having a renal problem and had to undergo dialysis, sources said.

Deputy commissioner of police A.D. Shinde confirmed that a complaint has been lodged in this connection by the Bund Garden police.

Sub-inspector Madhav Suryavanshi has been assigned the probe. Akhilesh himself has registered his statement with Suryavanshi.

While the incident, which occurred on Sunday afternoon, shook the BJMC — one of the most prestigious medical institutions in the country — the college authorities preferred being tightlipped and refused to elaborate any details. All that college dean V.L. Yemul would say when contacted by TOI was: "I have learnt something to this (ragging) effect.

I have sent my men to get exact details." When this reporter visited the ICU at the second floor of Sassoon building, the doctors attending to the victim refused to speak about his health and put the onus on Yemul.

Akhilesh's father, who had rushed to the hospital, was too worried to speak about the incident. At the hostel, students talked in hushed tones while saying that what happened with Akhilesh was "unfortunate".

Some of them demanded stern action against the culprits. Ragging is banned in Maharashtra and the enactment, Maharashtra Anti-Ragging Act of 1999, stipulates stringent punishment for the offenders, ranging from outright rustication to even a jail term, depending upon the seriousness of the offence.

Despite this, incidents of ragging have rocked academic institutions time and again. In 2003, as many as 26 students were shown the door at ILS Law College following a major ragging incident. SP College too was in the news for ragging.

Pune: Ahoy! Infosys 'spaceship' lands in Pune

Abhay Vaidya
[ 6 Sep, 2006 0019hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

PUNE: Indian IT giant Infosys Technologies, which has grabbed many a headline in software development, is now set to make waves in architecture.

On September 18, the company will inaugurate the first of its two "spaceships" in Pune — a gigantic, five-storey steel-glass-aluminium clad building that resembles a spacecraft and will house 3,000 professionals.

Truly unique among the thousands of buildings in Pune, if not India, the structure, designed by eminent architect Hafeez Contractor, looks like a spaceship that has just descended on Earth.

Gung-ho over Infosys' Pune operations, which celebrated the crossing of a 10,000 head count last week, Priti Rao, head of Infosys' Pune Development Centre described the building as a "spacecraft that will launch us in the next orbit."

Rao's excitement is understandable as Infosys (Pune) has seen a robust growth of 60-65 per cent over last year and expects the growth and expansion to continue in the next three years.

Broadly satisfied with Pune's infrastructure as compared to Bangalore, Infosys, which has invested Rs 270 crore here over the last three years, sees considerable potential for expansion as it has developed just 24 hectares of its 55-hectare land.

The company's 'spacecraft' is a part of this growth story and is set to be inaugurated by Infosys director and chief financial officer T.V. Mohandas Pai.

The building has 1.5 lakh sq.ft of floor space over five floors. Its form has been derived from an ellipsoid and the structure is meant to speak the hi-tech language of computers, software development and cutting-edge technology.

According to structural designer Dhananjay Dake of the Pune-based Construction Catalysers, which collaborated with Hafeez Contractor in this project, the partially-cut ellipsoid measures 105 metres along its longer axis and 65m along its shorter axis, rising to a height of 35m and tilting at an angle of 10 degrees.

It is this tilt that gives the new Infosys building in Pune the look of a descending spacecraft as "one of its ends appears to be buried into the ground and the other is lifted up".

Dake has been invited to give a presentation on the construction to the Forum for Exchange and Excellence in Design (FEED, Pune).

According to him, pre-stressed grid cell geometry was employed as a part of the innovative architectural engineering that went into this creation.

Bangalore: The best place to live in India

Rema Nagarajan
[ 4 Sep, 2006 0019hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: When it comes to choosing the city you would like to work and live in, it seems you cannot have it all. If a city is great for earning and investing in, it is not necessarily the best for living, as in the case of Surat.

On the other hand, there is Kolkata that ranks quite high as a city to live in but is the worst when it comes to making money or investing it.

Your best bet for a city that ranks fairly high on all three counts — living, working and investing — is Bangalore. It ranks as the top city to reside in and second best to earn.

As an investment destination, however, it's mediocre, ranking sixth. Delhi, by contrast, ranks high — fourth — only for earning.

Analysis of the top 10 cities of the country for earning, investing and residing is given in a study, The City Skyline of India 2006, published by Indicus Analytics.

The study is based on official statistics and online surveys conducted by Indicus in these cities. It yields interesting information on how often a citizen would have to haggle with an autowallah, what percentage of people own invertors, the city’s water and power supply, public transportation etc.

Surat with its low unemployment rates, high job growth rates and one of the highest per capita small business credit is the top destination for seeking jobs and business.

However, it is at the bottom in the list of Alpha cities (the top 10) in terms of good living, with nearly half the people expressing the need for more entertainment and better educational facilities.

It also has the lowest share of households in the top socio-economic category (SEC A) among the Alpha cities. One third of its households fall in SEC C.

Coimbatore strikes a decent balance: it's the best city to invest in but ranks fifth on the earning and good living front. The most pressing problem for residents seems to be water supply — which comes just once in two days.

On most other counts, the city offers a decent life though with relatively few avenues for entertainment.

With one of the lowest unemployment rates in this group of cities and per capita income comparable to the highest in the group, Pune too does well on all three counts of earn-in, invest-in and reside-in indices.

The metros, interestingly, are not the best performers in this list. Chennai is high up as a place to invest in and to live in.

The citizens are satisfied with the educational infrastructure, low crime level and efficient management of infrastructure. But with unemployment rate as high as 27%, do not head there if you are looking to earn good money.