Three hundred years old and still a midget.

Calcutta’s growth hormones have been secreting all right but not in the direction developers would like them to. All because of three stunting letters ? FAR.

Fleshed out, it means floor area ratio, which determines the extent of vertical development allowed on a plot. The ratio ? it’s also called FSI, or floor to space index ? is calculated on the width of the road that leads to the area being developed. The narrower the road, the shorter the building.

For example, for roads between seven and 10 metres wide, the FAR is 2. It goes up to 2.25 when the access road is between 10 and 15 metres wide, and 2.5 when the width is between 15 and 20 metres. The gradation, of course, varies with the type of project.

The maximum grade is 3 for projects where the access road is more than 24 metres wide. But even this is lower than that in other Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. There the FAR ranges between 5 and 15.

But what does an FAR of 2 mean in terms of height of a building?

An example should help clear the picture. Say, for instance, a person owns a 100-square-metre plot and the access road is 10 metres wide. As the FAR in this case is 2, the maximum height of the building can be two-tenths of the area of the plot or 20 metres. If the FAR was 2.5, the owner could have planned a 25-metre-high building on the same plot.

However, the access road is not the sole factor that decides the FAR. It also depends on other parameters like locality, ground coverage (usually construction is allowed on only 50-65 per cent of a plot for residential projects), availability of space for a covered car park and height restrictions cited in the building bye-laws of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation.

But it’s not only Calcutta where the FAR is low. The average across the country is just 1.5. In Delhi and Mumbai, the upper limit is 2.5. But in cities like Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, developers say it could go up to 3.75, and 5 in Surat, now in the grip of an extensive urban development.

Architects say in India, the calculation doesn’t take into account the population cities support. The result is a bigger hole in the pocket. “Lower levels of FSI result in people paying for the scarcity of product rather than the product itself due to resultant rise in prices,” says architect Hafeez Contractor.

The solution, the architect thinks, lies in increasing the FAR, keeping pace with the increase in population as “our cities grow bigger”.

So greater urbanisation could be the trigger for higher FAR? Likely, and more. At least that’s what P.S. Rana, the chairman and managing director of Hudco, believes.

Rana says the percentage of urbanised population, which has grown from 17 per cent in 1950 to 27.8 per cent in 2001, is expected to go up exponentially in the next 20 years. “The supply of land being a constant, higher FSI would be one of the key drivers of growth in urbanisation, especially in commercial and urban areas. It would entail a lower per unit floor price, in turn helping the cause of affordable housing across the spectrum.”

But what about Calcutta, which is still a dwarf among its high-rising cousins?

“We do provide relaxation in FAR but very selectively to projects for public welfare like hospitals, colleges and schools,” says municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay.

But the relaxation comes at a price: five times the normal sanction fees, which are Rs 52 a square foot for residential projects and Rs 100 a square foot for commercial ones.

Pradip Chopra, the secretary of the Bengal unit of real estate body Credai, says the corporation is “not expected to grant additional FSI in congested areas of the city”. But there is “no harm” in doing so in areas like EM Bypass and other areas “a bit outside the city limits”.

Developers and architects are not the only ones for a higher FAR. N.R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman of software major Infosys, says the FAR should be increased in central business districts so that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can afford office space in these areas.

G.D. Gautama, the principal secretary in the Bengal government’s infotech department, agrees. “SMEs form the backbone of the IT resurgence in the state and any measure to nurture their growth, including affordable real estate, should be of primary concern,” says Gautama.

Niranjan Hiranandani, managing director of Hiranandani Construction, which is constructing a 90-storey residential tower in Dubai, says lower FSIs are the “luxury” of the rich. “But even globally the rich are now relocating from bungalows to penthouse suites in space-crunched metropolises like New York, Tokyo and London.”

About India, he says, more and more people have to be accommodated in a limited area and the “main driver” for this would be a blanket increase in FAR across all the cities.