Nidhi Jamwal

Faced with an encroaching city, old world farmers created—and now own—a new world town

Neelima Muppa’s day begins at 7:30 am. A quick glance at the clock and a glass of juice later, she hits the nearby gym. Back home in 40 minutes, she showers, changes into office wear, and sits down to have breakfast. Her office starts at 9 o’clock, and 15 minutes before she’s expected in the office, she slings her bag on her shoulder and strols towards Cybercity in Magarpatta.

Pune’s notorious traffic jams do not set the pace of Muppa’s daily chores. “It is hard for my friends to believe that I walk to office. Since I shifted to Magarpatta, the quality of my life has undergone a sea change—no more skipping breakfast, no more jostling in crowded buses,” said the 27-year-old techie from Andhra Pradesh, who has been living at Magarpatta City on Pune’s outskirts for a year and a half.

Muppa is paying a monthly rent of Rs 11,000 for a two-bedroom apartment that would cost her Rs 8,000 in other localities, but she does not mind paying extra for the comforts she gets here.

“I use the time I save on commuting to meet friends, read or work out at the gym,” she said.

Magarpatta was designed to be a walk-to-all-destinations township. “We wanted to create a city where everyone follows one mantra: walk to school, walk to work and walk to recreation,” said Satish Magar, chairperson and managing director of Magarpatta Township Development and Construction Company, floated by farmers of the Magar clan who owned the 160 hectares on which the township has come up. “When I came up with the idea in early 1990s, no one took me seriously. I had an agrarian background without much construction experience. It took me seven years to convince the Maharashtra government.”


Farmers incorporated

Magarpatta is the first project in India in which farmers pooled their land and created a township, rather than selling their land to a real estate developer. Magar, an agriculturist with a politically active family, convinced 120 farmer families about the project in 1993. His immediate family owned over 40 per cent of the land.

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The same year he approached Sharad Pawar, the then Maharashtra chief minister, with his proposal. “It was natural for the state government to be wary because no farmer had ever attempted what we proposed. Questions were raised about the source of money and about paying back customers in case the project failed, but I was confident,” said Magar.

Although Magar is close to the political establishment (he is the nephew of a local political heavyweight, Annasaheb Magar, who was instrumental in establishing the twin industrial township of Pimpri-Chinchwad near Pune in the 1960s), he decided not to skip steps and waited till 2000 to get all clearances. “I met senior officials and in seven years I managed to convince the government that Magarpatta City was doable,” he said. Being rich, Magar could travel to several countries with his architect to study how urban cities were planned.

Each family got shares in the company according to its landholding, and each share is equivalent to 1 square metre of land. According to an article published recently by Infochange, an online resource base of developmental news, the cost of one share has gone up from Rs 100 in 2000 to Rs 1,000 in mid-2008, and the cost of a hectare from Rs 3 crore in 2000 to Rs 3.75 crore in 2007. Thirty per cent of the cost of construction was earmarked as cost of land and paid to the shareholders. A shareholding family has the option of reinvesting the amount in the company in the form of a term deposit.

Land title remains in the name of the farmer even when the land is developed and urbanized.

City facts On Pune-Solapur road, 7 km from the Pune railway station Planned for a population of 120,000; 4,000 families already residing India’s first township to receive the ISO 9001:2000 certification for quality Traffic regulated by CCTV Cybercity of 28 IT companies occupying about 3 million square feet A 275-bed hospital on the outskirts A 12-hectare special economic zone for electronics hardware and software under construction