Pune will soon acquire the status of being a metropolitan city in India. According to an Assocham report on ‘The 7th emerging metro city in India’ it owes its upgradation to a fast development pace in the area of infrastructural facilities, friendly business environment, education avenues and employment opportunities.
Contributing factors include the high real estate prices and a large population base as compared to other upcoming cities. The study was carried out in four tier II cities including Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Chandigarh ranking them on eight
parameters necessary for a metro city. They included social infrastructure, infrastructure availability, real estate cost and availability, transportation facility (connectivity), presence of quality educational institutes, employment opportunity, facility of financial services and business environment.
Pune occupied first position overall though it needs to improve on transportation, social infrastructure and financial services.
Ahmedabad was the second most potential city providing good infrastructure and facilities and connectivity. Lucknow was placed with third rank as it needs to pick up on infrastructure, business environment and social infrastructure.
Chandigarh, the smallest city among the four in terms of area size and population was ranked at the fourth position though it was ranked foremost in financial services and business environment.
Among the four cities, Ahmedabad occupied first rank on the parameter of social infrastructure. The city with literacy rate of 79.89% has high-grade institutes like IIM, NID, NIFT, EDII etc. The city of Nawabs, Lucknow with a literacy rate of 83.5% and presence of quality educational institutes including IIM, SGPGIMS etc was placed at second position. Both Pune and Chandigarh were assigned 3rd positions respectively on the social infrastructure parameter.
Pune has a literacy rate of 80.73% and skilled population, the city is a place of high grade institutes including NIBM, NIC etc. However, 81.9 per cent is the literacy rate in Chandigarh with prominent institutes being Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), Centre for Defence and National Strategic Studies (CDNSS) etc.
The infrastructure parameter rank cities on the basis of sub parameters including number of entertainment avenues, malls and multiplexes along with the presence of star category hotels.
The Queen of Deccan, Pune with maximum number of malls and multiplexes (26) and star category hotels (25) notched the top position. The second rank was occupied by Ahmedabad, with the city having 25 malls and multiplexes and 17 star category hotels. Chandigarh and Lucknow was placed at 3rd and 4th position respectively. The favourable location and smoothen process of acquiring land along with the high property prices are few sub parameters of real estate cost and availability that attracts corporate sector to expand their business.
Pune has outpaced the other three cities on the parameter of real estate prices and availability. After Pune, Chandigarh is considered to be the next emerging real estate market. Ahmedabad occupied 3rd rank while Lucknow at the bottom position was considered as most time consuming city in terms of process for acquiring land.
On the employment parameter, among the four upcoming tier II cities, Pune carved the maximum share of 32.74% in the total jobs tracked for the period January-June 2008. The prominent sectors attracting large number of aspirants include IT,manufacturing, engineering and academics among others.
The four cities are ranked on the parameter of financial services, taking into account the sub parameters including number of offices of scheduled commercial banks, density of offices of scheduled commercial banks per population, number of accounts of the scheduled commercial banks per population, presence of brokerage firms, presence of stock exchange, transparency in trading system. In terms of providing financial services facility to the natives of the city in respect of above parameters, Lucknow occupied first position. The second rank was grabbed by Chandigarh. However, both Pune and Ahmedabad occupied third rank.
