[Urbanstudy] magarpatta city, pune

Sun Apr 23 18:23:53 IST 2006

Hi, my name is Apurva and I am recipient of the Sarai student fellowship and this is my first posting. My topic is The Cultural Economy of New Urbanism: A Case of Magarpatta City, Pune. In this first posting I am providing with some information regarding how group of farmers came together, negotiated with state government, became developers of land and created separate corporate identity for themselves? I am specially focusing on the life and ideas of Mr. Satish Magar who not only brought all Magars (surname of all landholders) together for this project but also gave shape to his dreams to build a city with all latest infrastructures within Pune city.   

  Magarpatta city is a latest landmark in Pune. It is situated on the road to Solapur, 7 kms away from Pune railway station and at distance of 9 kms from airport. It is an enclosed planned city on 400 acres of land. What is unique about this township is that it has been developed by a farmers co-operative, some 120 families almost consisting of 800 individuals. They came together and pooled their ancestral lands held by them for over 300 years and proposed the idea of an innovative township with comprehensive civic, residential, educational, and commercial infrastructure to Pune Municipal Corporation and the Government of Maharashtra. This was the first instance in India, wherein the original landowners came together and planned an integrated township and formed their own company called Magarpatta Township Development and Construction Co. Ltd, which is developing and constructing Magarpatta city.[1]

   Here I am providing some information about the Satish Magar, who is the managing director of Magarpatta Township Development and Construction Company and deriving force behind the entire conception and planning. He studied in Punes Bishops School. His father and brother are engineers, while Satish graduated in agriculture from College of Agriculture, Pune. As a result along with agriculture, construction was also family profession. In early 90s he realized that cities in Maharashtra faced the problem of unorganized urbanization and especially Pune was getting urbanized very fast and that is why he along with the other land holding farmers decided to convert agricultural land into commercial plots and hubs. Satish did not want government to grab their land in the name of developing it. Satishs family has good political links. His fathers elder brother Annasaheb Magar was MLA for five terms from 1952. Later he became MP during the Janta Party regime. Despite this
 political connection Satish Magar negotiated hard with government and developing Magarpatta city has not been a smooth process for him. The urban land ceiling act was major hindrance and initially the government authorities were apprehensive about the model as there was no precedent like it in India. Development control rules for such large developments within the municipal areas were simply non-existent.

    In 1992-93 a lot of unauthorized constructions came up all over the place and therefore Satish decided to develop a township in reaction to this in 1994. In this agricultural land, initially some individual farmers sold small plots and therefore one or two buildings came up. He realized that the infrastructure that these fragments development enjoyed was almost nil, so Satish Magar decided to develop a township equipped with all latest infrastructures. Instead of setting up heavy industries that would be polluting, he decided to develop a software park, also he wanted the residential complex next to the work place and this was not possible with heavy industries.  To convert his dreams into a reality he called the meeting of the farmers holding lands. Most of the farmers had the same surname-Magar and area has been called Magarpatta for last 400 years and in Magarpatta, Satish Magars family owned 40 percent of the total land. Down the generations, family land had
 become fragmented due to divisions into it so Satish told them that they could uplift themselves by becoming developers of land. He also assured that everyone would get the share depending on the size of their land and in this way instead of land sellers they become land developers. Being Magars every farmer trusted Satish Magar who promised that he would not sell or mortgage the land to borrow the money till the project start. Later they approached the government with their plan. At that time Sharad Pawar was Maharashtra chief minister who approved the plan but the entire process took six years and they had dealt with four chief ministers. The construction started only in the year 2000.

  It is also interesting to note that in carrying out this development project Satish used his own human resources. For example the Magars sent their youth to study at National Institute of Construction, Pune and did not call any builder from outside. They made their own people contractor and decided to have their own quarries. Contractors who were Magars farmer supplied Sand. They made their own brick. Only steel, cement and high quality glass was imported from market. However, Magars in carrying out their development project talked to well known architect Hafeez Contractor and also took help from local architects. Using their own human resources and training and experiences for the project, Magars intended to build entrepreneurs for next generation. This also helped them to construct a separate corporate identity. When they completed their first building-Daffodils-it was difficult to find buyers then they did aggressive marketing and co-branded with HDFC bank.
 Satish and other sales team visited and talked to customer personally and came up with one-liners like buy a house, get a city free. They came up with attractive brochures and held IT fair for the IT Park in 2000. This brought them lot of attention but they started the first IT Park, cybercity, only in 2003. 

  Being a inhabitant of Magarpatta area which was situated at outskirt of Pune, Magars faced problems of commuting for work, education, health and other facilities therefore Satish Magar wanted to create an ideal situation where Magars and others could walk to work and walk to school and hospital and so on. To give Magarpatta Township a modern outlook and to make it Pune citys Oxygen Zone Satish Magar planned for recreation centers like sports complex, amphitheatre, shopping and entertainment centre, eco-friendly sustainable garbage disposal system and various gardens ranging from 0.25 acres to 25 acres. He has also given extra thought to security system. In Magarpatta city security guards keep record of every employee, every car and driver. They have also created central tracking system at base camp and all security guards are connected with radio.  To bring together Magarpatta residents, who are from different social and cultural background Satish Magar has
 formed a cultural trust. Every apartment owner will be a member of this trust and they get together to conduct cultural activities in the Magarpatta city. According to Satish Magar, Magarpatta city would be residence of 12000 families and four million square feet of workspace has been provided for 40,000 workers. Around four thousand people will be permanently employed in support and maintenance system. The total project cost of Magarpatta city is 4,000 crore and will be completed by 2008 and government of Maharashtra has already recognized it as a model for development of private townships in the state.  

  Today Magars are financially better off. Satish thinks that their assets will give them money always and have brought financial security along with social upliftment. He is very proud of Magars unity that helped them to achieve so much and to budding entrepreneurs his message is, in the current world scenario with the opening up of the economy availability of finance is no longer a problem. What is required is a realistic project and execution of its with complete discipline, dedication, and determination.[2] 

  After coming to know about the story of Magars who were originally agriculturalist and who eventually decided to become developers leads to questions like: to what extent, as this story suggests, do their political links and connections helped them to become developers of land? Later, I also came to know that Magarpatta city has been exempted from the provisions of Urban Land Ceiling Act of 1976 and that makes my question much valid because our knowledge suggests that politicians maintains control over land through draconian laws on land ownership and it uses. Only the government has power to allow agricultural land to be used for commercial purposes, and the farmer can almost never sell it directly to a builder.

  And secondly, is fortification, sanitization of urban space or gated residential enclaves, like Magarpatta city, answer to haphazard or unorganized urbanization which are so wide spread in cities like Pune today?

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      [1] Maharashtra Economic Development Council, Monthly Economic Digest, October 2004. 

    [2] ibid

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