My friend and col­league Ajay Dabas does quip pon­der­ously that “Delhi was built majestic­ally by the Brit­ish who never has 10−20−30 year(s) announced mas­ter­plans as a futur­istic city, esp. focussed on the qual­ity of life­style of the inhab­it­ants. Polit­ics of devel­op­ment„ coupled with the ser­i­ous intent of the class divide brought in inward look­ing mas­ter plans which cre­ated Delhi into an urban slum over the past 50 years”.

Sets me think­ing — What is it that the Brit­ish had which we Indi­ans haven’t been able to replicate.

Answer seems to be — “POSITIVE INTENT & TIME BOUND IMPLEMENTATION”

I am not once con­fused by the Brit­ish intent Vs. Desi lead­ers’ dir­ec­tion. Both desired a cer­tain ves­ted interest, as well as the emphasis of their lead­er­ship on the so called “aam-janta”. TO say the least, both suc­ceeded, and how.

Delhi hasn’t cre­ated any mar­quee land­mark build­ing, and still boasts of those that the Brit­ish left for us, to savour, deteri­or­ate and exploit. I have my sense of exas­per­a­tion when I read that 54% of Delhi is Urban slums and unau­thor­ized colonies.

A spate of recent announce­ments in Delhi sets me think­ing — “are we finally ready to shed the image of an old dilap­id­ated city, one con­struc­ted majestic­ally by the Brit­ish, and left to rot even more majestic­ally”. How­ever, things seem to be chan­ging. Delhi gov­ern­ment agen­cies seem to be tak­ing the “Builder” tag seriously.

Moti Bagh, Jawa­harlal Nehru Bhawan, Maulana Azad marg, Jan­path, INA, Shah­dra, Kid­wai Nagar, Vas­ant Kunj, Rajouri Garden and some more areas seem to have caught the atten­tion for rebuild­ing projects.

• Is that owing to the acute short­age of Min­is­terial houses?
• Do our policy makers desire swankier offices?
• Do they expect mega park­ing & parks for their fleets?
• Is there a genu­ine aware­ness, awaken­ing and desire to re-build Delhi.

It is heard that some areas of New Moti Bagh are short­l­is­ted to build min­is­terial houses, and NBCC is the short­l­is­ted part­ner who would not only build, but also fund the con­struc­tion through a unique fin­ance model wherein they would be allowed to sell 10% of the total land area for com­mer­cial pur­pose, in return for the min­is­terial housing.

“The gov­ern­ment is now open to the idea of mak­ing build­ers like us con­struct min­is­terial bun­ga­lows because they want the pro­ject to be delivered on time. Also, the gov­ern­ment didn’t have funds for the pro­ject, so we came up with the idea of build­ing them at our own cost and tak­ing some land to build a com­mer­cial com­plex in return,” said Arup Roy Choudhury, chair­man and man­aging dir­ector, NBCC.

NBCC has already delivered 50 bun­ga­lows and the rest are expec­ted to be com­pleted in a year.

Choudhury added, “Play­ers like CPWD are quite under­staffed so most of their pro­jects suf­fer time over­runs over­time, so the gov­ern­ment is look­ing for fresh bid­ders who can have accountability.”

Other ini­ti­at­ives include 7.78 acres of land on Jan­pth under one of the Green build­ing ini­ti­at­ives of the govt, an office com­plex in INA con­sist­ing of 6 blocks, one of which might house the HQ of CVC, another com­mer­cial com­plex in Kid­wai Nagar, One res­id­en­tial pool accom­mod­a­tion pro­ject in Shah­dra etc.

The gov­ern­ment is also plan­ning a com­mer­cial com­plex in Kid­wai Nagar, though no details are avail­able. The cost expendit­ure for these pro­jects alone would exceed about 600 crores, as per con­ser­vat­ive estimates.

Can’t expect DDA to be left behind (in announce­ments only). They also have announced plans for hous­ing com­plexes in Vas­ant Kunj Jasola, Dwarka, Narela, Bap­rola etc; a stag­ger­ing 65000 res­id­en­tial units with an invest­ment of almost $500 million.

Park­ing lots in many areas like Subhash Nagar, Rajouri Garden, Hauz Khas, Gandhi Nagar, Model Town 2 and Munirka are already under con­struc­tion with invest­ments of around 200 crores . The pro­ject is worth Rs 170 crore.

Now, are these mirages or indicators?

Author Ramesh Menon is the Head– stra­tegic con­sult­ing for Certes Realty Ltd, a boutique real estate con­sult­ing com­pany, based out of New Delhi NCR (India).He can be reached on menon@certesrealty.com