“I am shocked by the number and size of buildings coming up in the name of TDR (Transfer of Development Rights). But even a rickshaw driver can understand that such constructions will just put more load on the city's water, drainage. There is no one comprehensive plan for development,” says actor and former director of FTII, Mohan Agashe, who, in his column in this newspaper last year, called Pune “a schizophrenic city”.

Within the city are proven cases of constructions along the no-build-zone on the banks of Ramnadi—Pune’s parallel to Mumbai’s Mithi river—but no action is being taken against these illegal structures.

For the city, there’s no likelihood of waking up from this nightmare as the real estate sector is on fire and there are no signs of it cooling down despite one scam after another breaking out.

The scrapping of ULCA by the Maharashtra Government on November 29 will release 54,363 acres of land, of which 23,475 acres have been earmarked for construction activity. This, however, will not bring down the real estate prices since the new land lie on the fringes of Pune city. If at all, the availability of more land could affect prices only after a year.

Quick to spot a revenue opportunity, Pune Municipal Commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi is now training his guns on the elastic sources of growth: real estate, IT and automobiles. But its mostly the first. “We are tapping into these double-digit growth sectors and will hike development charge collection (from real estate) from Rs 200 crore last year to over Rs 400 crore in the current fiscal. The results will be visible in city roads by June 2008,” says Pardeshi optimistically.

... contd.