On either side of the 20-km Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, which links Calcutta’s airport and the eastern part of the city to the south, buildings tower into the sky. A decade ago, this was a vast expanse of marshy land. Today, scores of labourers and giant cranes are at work here. Skeletal scaffolding and hordes of billboards that advertise housing projects with rooftop gardens, swimming pools and clubs have become part of the city’s landscape. Nor is this construction frenzy confined to eastern Calcutta. Glitzy malls, multiplexes and condominiums are sprouting all over the city, whether it’s at Cossipore in the north or Jadavpur in the south. A metropolis the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi once famously described as dying is caught in a huge construction explosion.

Indeed, Calcutta’s skyline is being altered so dramatically that some can scarcely believe the transformation that’s underway. Gazing out of his 10th-floor office in south Calcutta, Dulal Mukherjee, head of architecture firm Dulal Mukherjee & Associates, exclaims: “It’s unbelievable! It’s changing so fast.” The 65-year-old architect has worked on several housing projects, including South City, perhaps south Calcutta’s tallest and most expensive ongoing residential project.

Raja Kaushal, head of the ICICI Bank’s retail and leisure property services in Delhi, puts Calcutta’s construction boom in perspective when he declares: “We are bullish about Calcutta. This is one of the emerging real estate markets in the country today along with Chennai and Pune.”

Nearly 50 large building projects ? all 10 storied or above, with 300 to 1,800 flats ? are coming up in the city at the moment, says Pradip Kumar Chopra, secretary of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India’s Bengal chapter. Most have swimming pools, gyms, clubs and malls ? all unthinkable five years ago. This apart, Chopra says at least 1,000 medium-sized projects ? mostly five-storied apartment buildings, with a car park on the ground floor ? are being constructed in the city, up from the 300 mid-sized apartment houses that were built in 2000.

That’s not all. According to construction industry men, the square feet of area under construction in the city has been growing by more than 30 per cent over the last two years. “Calcutta was for a long time lagging behind other metros when it came to real estate activity. But now the tempo has built up,” says Pradip Kumar Mukherjee, general manager at the Housing Development Finance Corporation’s (HDFC) eastern region. He says that the number of housing loans HDFC has disbursed in the city has been growing at a 30 per cent plus clip over the last couple of years. Adds he: “More and more people are taking loans and buying flats.”

This year, nearly 20 million sq. ft of floor space, both residential and commercial, is being built in the city, up from under five million sq. ft five years ago, Chopra says. Guess how much money is being poured into for this? Hold your breath: nearly Rs 5,000 crore.

What triggered the boom

The construction frenzy will only accelerate. The Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association forecasts that in the next five years a mammoth 250 million sq. ft of space will be built in the Greater Calcutta area. The total investment: a huge Rs 37,500 crore, at the rate of Rs 1,500 per sq. ft. Strikingly, the boom is drawing developers from far and wide, ranging from the Delhi-based Unitech group to Prasoon Mukherjee’s Indonesia-based Universal Success. The two companies have combined to put up a Rs 3,000 crore office-cum-residential project for software companies and professionals at Rajarhat, the new satellite township that’s barely 10 km from Calcutta airport.

A number of factors are prompting the construction boom ? low-interest loans are more easily available, the number of nuclear families is on the rise and the public has begun to realise that investments in real estate are safe bets. But above all, Calcutta now houses several information technology (IT) company executives. So real estate companies are zeroing in on them and on non-resident Indians (NRIs) by putting up posh flats.

“The economic landscape in Calcutta is fast changing with the IT sector booming and companies like IBM, TCS and Wipro setting up shop in Salt Lake,” explains Rahul Todi, managing director of Bengal Shrachi Housing Development Ltd. He says that software company executives bought nearly 65 per cent of the flats at two of his company’s projects in New Town, Rajarhat. Ratan Sarkar, a consultant to Vision Comptech, a software development company in Salt Lake, adds that IT professionals are buying flats in the city, as they want to return from Bangalore and Hyderabad and settle down here.

NRIs too are buying apartments in a big way. That’s partly because real estate companies have, for a few years, held road shows in London, New York and Dubai; some even set up stalls at the recently concluded Biswa Bengali Sammelan in New York. Bengalis in the US, the UK and West Asia seem to have been attracted by the city’s infrastructural improvements ? five-star hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, private schools and hospitals. “They have an emotional attachment to the city where most of the them grew up and have their relatives,” says Jugal Khetawat, a director of South City, the company set up by several other real estate companies to float the South City project. NRIs have already bought more than 30 per cent of the project’s flats.

Predictably, Calcutta’s real estate boom has resulted in a scarcity of skilled personnel. Builders are already facing a shortage of civil engineers. In some parts of south Calcutta, residents grumble about not being able to call electricians or plumbers for repair work at home, because builders have engaged most of them.

What is more, land prices and prices of flats are ballooning. Khetawat, who is president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association, says the land prices have almost doubled over the last two years, while the prices of flats have increased by 20 to 30 per cent. In 2001, flats in Rajarhat, for instance, were sold for Rs 1,000 per sq. foot. Apartments in the area now fetch Rs 1,500-1,600 per sq. foot. In the upscale neighbourhoods of New Alipore and Ballygunge, apartments are now priced at Rs 3,300-3,500 per sq. foot, up from Rs 2,500-2,700 per sq. foot in 2001.

All for a good bargain

Nonetheless, prices are still lower in Calcutta than in most big cities. “You get a decent flat at Rajarhat for Rs 1,500 per sq. ft, but a similar flat in, say, Gurgaon or Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi will cost you at least Rs 2,500 per sq. foot,” notes Harshvardan Neotia, managing director of Bengal Ambuja Housing Development Ltd.

Calcutta’s construction boom has other pluses too. Ravi Poddar, eastern regional chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry, says that the boom is pushing more investment into the city, throwing up more job opportunities and showcasing Calcutta’s growing economic prowess. “More than anything else, the rising construction activity shows that Calcutta is alive and kicking. It’s not a dying or dead city,” Poddar says wryly, referring to Rajiv Gandhi’s statement.

With the state government too foraying into the real estate sector by floating eight joint sector companies (Bengal Ambuja is one of them), Neotia says there has been an overall improvement in the quality of construction. “There is also greater transparency in property deals,” Neotia adds. That’s because, as housing minister Goutam Deb points out, promoters of housing projects are now required to register with his department and submit all details of their projects before they can start work.

Not everyone agrees. Prabir Basu, working president of the Bengal Federation of Consumer Organisations, argues that many builders do not often provide what they charge their buyers for. “They tell you they will give you a multi-gym and charge you for that, but in the end provide only a treadmill and an exercise cycle. They also often delay giving possession,” Basu says.

Builders, meanwhile, fret that the huge amount of construction in Calcutta will lead to oversupply. “It will happen in five years,” Khetawat says. Till then, though, Mukherjee and other architects and builders will burn the midnight oil to complete the hordes of buildings that are coming up.

The skyline is changing, and there is work to be done.

Calcutta 2025: Ring roads, health city, biotech park

Cars will zip down broad, leafy ring roads that encircle the city. The ring roads will be lined with garden-fronted highrises and glass-and-marble shopping arcades. The city will have three new townships. And it could perhaps be the medical capital of the region, catering to overseas patients — on its outskirts will be a health city with super-speciality hospitals and medical and nursing colleges, apart from a biotechnology park.

No, we’re not referring to New Delhi or Bangalore. In 2025, that’s what Calcutta will look like if the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) has its way.

CMDA CEO P.R. Baviskar says that the population of the Calcutta metropolitan area — made up of three corporations, 38 municipalities and 22 Panchayat Samitys — is expected to balloon from 14.69 million to 21 million in two decades. Consequently, the demand for roads and houses will soar.

Baviskar says the government will build two ring roads (an inner ring road and an outer ring road, just like the ones New Delhi has) to speed up traffic flow. To build the inner ring road, the proposed Eastern Expressway, Southern Expressway, Belgharia Expressway and National Highway 2 and 6 will be connected by building 116 km of new roads.

Similarly, 72 km of new roads will be constructed to build the outer ring road that will run around the Calcutta metropolitan area. “The roads are already there. So, all we have to do is join the missing links,” Baviskar says.

Three new satellite townships will be built in Howrah, on the other side of the Hooghly river, Dankuni (about 15 km from Calcutta) and Baruipur (now a small town about 12 km from Calcutta). “They will relieve the pressure on Calcutta to a large extent,” the CMDA CEO says.

Work on the 390-acre township in Howrah has already begun and will be partly complete by 2008. Nearly 5,000 acres of land have been earmarked for the project in Dankuni, while the Baruipur township will cover 2,600 acres. Work in Dankuni and Baruipur is expected to start in a year.

Once the new township comes up in Baruipur in 2008 or so, the headquarters of South 24 Parganas district — still in Calcutta’s Alipore — will be shifted there. Dankuni township is expected to be functional, at least partly, by 2011.

The health city will come up over 800 acres in Sonarpur, around 10 km from Calcutta. Some Rs 20,000 crore will be invested in it. According to Sajal Dutta, president of the Association of Hospitals of Eastern India, who’s involved in the project, at least 100 hospitals with a total capacity of 50,000 beds will come up in the health city, aimed mainly at patients from Southeast and West Asia. The city will also house medical and nursing colleges and training institutes for paramedics.

The biotechnological park, Baviskar says, will come up over 200 acres in the city. Several biotechnology companies have shown interest in setting up research and development facilities here. But the site has not yet been finalised. It could be either in Sonarpur or in Rajarhat, barely 10 km from Calcutta airport where a satellite township called New Town is coming up.

Clearly, cartographers will have to redraw the city’s map in the years ahead.

D.B.