By Rajiv Shah
Is the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s top
dream project – Gujarat International Finance Tec-city (GIFT) -- all set to be scaled
down? Proposed as India’s premier
financial hub for more than Rs 78,000 crore, questions began asked about its
viability ever since it was first announced in 2007. If earlier only bureaucrats
in the state capital Gandhinagar doubted it would be anything more than a real estate
hub, now it transpires that the man who promised to make GIFT a big success has
questioned its viability.
In a recent news article, The New York Times (NYT) has said,
“RK Jha, director of the project since 2010, said it (GIFT) needed to be
radically scaled down, and reduced the first phase of construction to two
29-story office buildings, the tallest structures in Gujarat.”
Pointing towards the plight of GIFT as of today, NYT has
said, “So far, there are only four tenants, including the state electricity
commission (Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission or GERC) and the
development company behind the project (Infrastructure Leasing & Financial
Services or IL&FS).”
Citing it an example of how Modi tries to build dream among
people without seeking to answer the question whether it would be realized, NYT
says, “One case study can be found around seven miles from the airport in
Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat, where two modern office buildings stand
in the middle of a dry, empty field.”
“This GIFT City intended as an international finance centre.
The project was introduced to fanfare in 2007, after Modi was inspired on a
visit to Shanghai”, the NYT article, written by Ellen Barry, under the title “Policies
Help an Indian Candidate Trying to Go National” (May 6), says, adding, “The
initial plans, drawn up by a Chinese design institute, were grandiose, calling
for the simultaneous construction of 125 glassy skyscrapers, the highest
reaching 1,000 feet, with underground roadways and midair pedestrian bridges.”
It is not without reason that, nearly two years ago, Gujarat
babus had sensed that GIFT would be a non-starter. A high-level meeting of
state secretaries (click HERE
to read) sharply criticized the GIFT project, following a presentation by Jha
on how he proposed to turn it into a financial hub. They told Jha that GIFT's
priorities had all gone awry. State bureaucrats particularly wondered what did GERC,
whose job is to decide on fixing tariffs for different segments of consumers, had
anything to do with a finance city.
Babus questioned the decision to shift the GERC office to
the new GIFT site following an agreement, which finalized to sell GERC a 29,000
sq-feet floor space on the sixth floor of one of the two 29-storey towers. "There
is a huge gap between what GIFT was visualized and what you are presenting it
to us. Do you want GIFT to be a conglomerate of different types of offices?
What would GERC do there? And, why do you want nationalized banks to open
offices when it should be a hub for metal trading, stock trading, hedging and
private sector insurance and banking?," they wondered.
About half-a-dozen top bureaucrats, including the then additional
chief secretary (ACS) planning Varun Maira, the then ACS home and general
administration Varesh Sinha, the then principal secretary, forests and
environment, S K Nanda, principal secretary, and energy and petrochemicals D
Jagatheesa Pandian, asked the GIFT director to work out priorities.
One of them told Jha, "You seem to have come here to
sell GIFT to government-run corporations. First the PSUs were asked to
contribute their corporate social responsibility funds for the world's proposed
tallest building, Sardar Statue, overlooking the Narmada dam. Then it was the
turn of Metro-link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad to demand money from
PSUs. Now it is GIFT which wants PSUs to buy up office space. What's going on?
When will everyone stop pulling PSUs in different directions like this?"
The babus were also unimpressed when the presentation which said
that the height of the buildings in GIFT will reach up to 150 storeys when the
international airport is shifted from Ahmedabad to Dholera, about 100
kilometres away. "You can't talk in just ifs and buts," said one
official. On the issue of having a huge exhibition complex in GIFT, a second official
wondered if this is its core activity.” On the issue of having call centres and
IT firms in GIFT, another official wondered, "What is the difference
between GIFT and the Infocity?"
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