Wither Pune? Wither Punekar?

There once was a small city of Pune, Punyanagari as the residents fondly called it. The residents were knows are Punekars and their attitude itself had a name of Puneri. The city was known as a sleepy city. Mumbaikars teased them how no one in this city owned watches. But they did own watches, they would open their stores at 10:00 am. Would shut them down by 12:30 pm, sleep till 4:00 pm, re-open their stores till 8:00 pm and go back home. They would proudly shop at Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale and Grahak Peth. They would ride their trusty luna’s with the popular refrain of “chal meri luna”. Cars would be the domain of a few. Their high rise building would go to a dizzy 3 floors and the most popular place to live was in the peths that were crowded to the hilt.
WOW that is what I say when I see the new Pune. There are malls all along the streets. Pyramid at Moledina Road, Pune Central near Koregaon Park, Nucleus Mall at Police Commissioners office and at least 5-6 more being constructed along big streets in Pune. This in itself is a terrific development. I checked out all of these, they have deep parking spaces underground, and a lot of room to put up food courts. The one problem it causes is that it does nothing to elevate the traffic congestion and crowd trouble around the area. What they should do instead is move the surrounding small shops into these malls. Move Marz-o-Rin, Burger King, all these stores into the pyramid mall. This will force people to park their cars in the basements of these malls and also keep the crowds inside; this will ease the woes of East Street and M.G Road. The cantonment officials can then put together a terrific plan to replace the old dilapidated buildings into bigger ones that can be planned around wider roads.
These ideas sound obvious to a common person but again the bane of Indian officialdom is committees and master plans. Currently the infrastructure being put together, is the result of the 1980 committee results on transforming the streets of Pune. Even if all the suggestions of this report are implemented by the end of this decade in 2010, infrastructure needs will still be outweighed by 30 years. This is all mind-boggling. Implementation of plans is what takes long years in India. In Pune currently every known street and every unknown street has been dug up. This reduces the width of every road 5-15 ft. The plans are to lay down optical cables for communications, underground electrical cables etc. before they redo all the streets, presumably in concrete. But all the streets have been dug up at the same time. Now there are no workers present at any of these sites so there is no reason for the citizens to feel there is any hope for a quick remedy to their problems. In true Indian officialdom fashion the funds must’ve dried up till the next financial year. There are municipal elections planned for next year, the corporators want to tell their constituents that they are keeping their promises by re-constructing streets. But they should have known that the election code of conduct will come into force and prevent any more funds being allocated for populist projects.
The culture that comes along with these new developments of malls and lavish restaurants is that Punekars are now enjoying the nightlife. Big families head out every evening for dining out. What used to be an occasion, to head out on Saturday evening or Sunday evening with your kids is now a daily occurrence. This must be due to the multiple allowances provided by the different companies to their employees. The sprouting of BPO’s and offshore development centers has provided jobs to even the barely qualified applicants within the city. Students in Junior colleges work nights at different call-centers and earn in the thousands. At a time when my pocket money would be Rs.50 per week, the cost of petrol was Rs.20; this would leave me about Rs.25 to spend on food and hanging out with friends. Now even college students can afford coffees worth Rs.200. In addition to all this, students from other states have started making Pune their homes. Earlier these students would complete their studies and head to Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad or Delhi to secure jobs. Now with the Software development center opened up in Pune, they set up shop there. The significance of this occurrence is that there were always such kids who had the big amounts of money to spend even when we were students, this culture had already been omnipresent in the well-to-do homes of Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. It is still a foreign concept to what used to be the Marathi Manus.
Another factor that has influenced this new Pune is the scores of students who went to the US during the software boom of 1999-2003. Software companies would send out new entrants to the US within 6 months of their graduations. Every engineering student in Pune had given their GRE’s or was in the process of giving them in their final years. With a downturn in the US economy and the upturn of the Indian economy, India became a destination of choice for a lot of these people rather than face the uncertainties of the US. When they came back, they brought with them stories of Malls, Multiplexes, super shopping centers and influenced the Indian Retail Sector to push development of those. Once the initial centers saw a steady stream of customers, every one wanted a piece of the pie. Even today, as I look around me, I see a lot of NRI families visiting their relatives in India during the December vacations, they, like me shop till they drop, buy 22 ct gold, travel only first class and eat only at Subway (I don’t).
When and if I ever do return to this lovely city of mine, it really will never be the city I once knew or have even figured out today, it will be a new incarnation some 10-15 years from now. It will always be a new experience for me and I will have to remind myself that I am not in the Pune I knew but am in a whole new city.