So, what does Nagpur offer that other cities don’t? Additional Chief Secretary

R C Sinha, vice-chairman and managing director of the Maharashtra Airport Development Company Ltd, asked himself that question at a recent conference. “Oranges? Yes, but something more as well,” he said.

While there is connectivity by air, road and rail to all parts of India, the city also occupies a strategic central point in international aviation routes; the country’s busiest ATC point is also immense potential for cargo hubbing with destinations in all directions—Europe, the CIS, Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. With 27 engineering colleges and 8,700 graduates yearly—almost 80 per cent of them looking outside Nagpur for jobs, there is enormous human resource potential just within the city.

That’s why the facilities within the walled SEZ will cater to the world’s best corporates. “There will be a dual water supply system,” says S V Chahande, chief engineer of MADC, “separate lines for potable and non-potable water, along with a waste water treatment plant.” Also on the drawing board: An exhibition-cum-convention centre with a hotel and shopping area designed by Hafeez Contractor, a central facility building to be built by Shapoorji Pallonji. And all this infrastructure will be ready by December 2008, promises Sinha, the bureaucrat who supervised the construction of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and who has been personally marketing the idea of Nagpur and MIHAN to global IT biggies for months now.

But it is Prem Assija, senior vice-president (Corporate) of HCL Technologies which has signed up for 140 acres of land at the SEZ, who puts Nagpur’s attraction in perspective. “There is tremendous pressure on the profit margins of IT companies,” he says, explaining the impact of the weaker dollar. As salaries and real estate prices rise, IT firms have had 10 per cent profits knocked out in four months, 15 per cent in the last 12 months. “It makes sense to go to Tier II towns,” says Assija, who’s in charge of setting up HCL campuses and is incidentally a former Nagpurite. “Also, we feel there is a large untapped pool of talent here, going elsewhere for jobs.”

... contd.