[Urbanstudy] magarpatta city, pune
sadan at sarai.net
sadan at sarai.net
Mon Apr 24 11:36:58 IST 2006
dear Apurva,
thanks for making a nice posting. I liked the way you have narrated the
story of the development of a township in such a lucid manner. However,
this also raises few quick questions and few suggestions.
first, the obvious one. How smooth has been this process for Mr.Satish?
Your narrative makes him a big hero of this whole process who acquired
trust of his community people merely because he is a member( an
influential) of the same community. It would be interesting to explore
difficulties he faced not merely from the government officials but also
from within the community.
secondly, A brief account of Pune city in this period would help readers
to understand the context in which Magarpatta is coming up. What I find
interesting here is a different twist to builder-politician nexus. Here
we do not have a builder as we normally perceive a figure but a person,
who comes from agriculture background, is quite influentially placed in
his own community and is graduated in agriculture. But all these do not
question his builder image. At the end he is a builder. At least the
story gives this impression. If this is a case then bio of Mr.Satish
should be placed along few more bios of builders from Pune city. This
may provide some more clues to builder-politician nexus.
Apurva, you have mentioned brochures and other advertisement materials
which developers of the Magarpatta brought out. I hope you are
documenting all these material as they can provide insights on how this
community based company planned to sell their own images specially the
issue of community bondage (which is all spread in your narrative). It
would also be worth to look at and if possible to document the records
maintained by security guards there.
Looking Forward,
wishes,
sadan.
apurva kumar wrote:
> 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 farmer’s 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]
> <http://us.f389.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=33239&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=1&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn1>
> 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 Pune’s Bishop’s 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. Satish’s
> family has good political links. His father’s 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 Magar’s 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 city’s
> ‘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]
> <http://us.f389.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=33239&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=1&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftn2>
> 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?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> [1]
> <http://us.f389.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=33239&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=1&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref1>
> Maharashtra Economic Development Council, Monthly Economic Digest,
> October 2004. [2]
> <http://us.f389.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?YY=33239&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=1&view=a&head=b&box=Inbox#_ftnref2>
> ibid
>
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