AT 29, this Blackberry-wielding industrialist armed with a business degree from the UK is a young boss operating from his family’s offices in Nagpur, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Ranchi and Durgapur. Favourite city? “Nagpur,” Abhishek Jayaswal says without hesitation. “The quality of life here is simply addictive.”

Jayaswal is director of the Abhijeet Group, which recently won the bid to set up and operate a 150 MW thermal power plant for the

Rs 3,150-crore Multimodal International Hub Airport at Nagpur (MIHAN). “I work long hours but still have time for friends, for travelling. The food is great, the people are nice. In Mumbai, you spend three hours commuting everyday. Reduce that to half-an-hour. Imagine the quality of life then.”

But tranquil evenings could hardly have drawn Boeing, Wipro, Satyam Computers, HCL, L&T, DLF and Ispat to Nagpur, until now known as a 300-year-old city with a rich history, capital of neglected Vidarbha. Suddenly, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India is checking how many of its degree holders may be required in an SEZ adjoining MIHAN, technical college principals are asking which diplomas and degrees will be in demand, placement firms are gearing up and IT students are cancelling migration plans.

And it’s all thanks to a plan not attempted anywhere in India, a plan to turn what has been the heart of the country, India’s ‘zero-point’, into a hub of international cargo movement with a multi-product Special Economic Zone (SEZ) adjacent, both to be operational less than two years from now. In the 4,354-hectare project area being planned and executed by government undertaking Maharashtra Airport Development Company Ltd (MADC) will be extra length for the existing runway to welcome the world’s biggest aircraft, the Airbus A 380; an additional airstrip located 1.6 km from the existing one, 4,000 metre long and 60 metre wide; and standing between them will be the country’s largest terminal building at 3 million square feet. Over 100 aircraft will be parked at any time, up from the current five. According to a techno-economic feasibility report, the projected passenger traffic is 14 million people per annum and 8.7 lakh tonnes of cargo traffic per annum by 2035. Adjacent will be the 2,086-hectare SEZ, for export-oriented units like IT, gems and jewellery, garments, electronic goods, pharmaceuticals and processed foods. The buzz about Nagpur is now a roar.

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