How to make a city Unaffordable

In September 1992 I got to my terra-firma, Hyderabad. I had fled the so called IT capital of India, Bangalore at the first possible opportunity to get back to a city which I grew up, our own Hyderabad. There is a long story in that.

I had grown up in Hyderabad with my schooling (Model High School) and graduation (Railway Degree College) and then moved to Chennai for my hotel management course (IHMCTAN, Taramani). My dad was employed with the South Central Railway in Secunderabad. I had moved into Bangalore in the late 80's from Vizag, which was second port of call after Taj Banjara in Hyderabad (the only five star hotel in Hyderabad those days) where I began my career.

I liked Bangalore at its first sight, in its years before the IT boom. It was also a time when one could walk into a house in Koramangala and meet a gentleman called Narayana Murthy. (Yes, I did and Murthy looked confused as to why we from the advertising wing of The Times of India wanted to see him). Bangalore was its pristine best and I was not yet married then, a right time for romantic interludes. The years flew and in no time I had switched careers moving from the hospitality industry to the media. My tenure in Bangalore lasted from 1989 to 1992, first at Taj's Gateway Hotel on Residency Road and later on at The Times of India.

It was during my career in Times that I started thinking about my long term plans. As a newly wed, I no longer had the option of a happy go lucky style that had marked my bachelor days. The IT boom of the early 90s was making the stay in the Garden City of Bangalore an impossible one. Rents were going up by the day and with it the hefty deposit one had to shell out. Traffic from BTM layout where I stayed to my office on MG Road was getting crazy, taking more than an hour. Getting a place to park on M G Road or Church Street would drive one mad. That all changed one evening. At the end of a Times Response conference in Banaglore, Pradeep Guha, the then Director Response of The Times of India popped a question “Suresh, are you willing to relocate to Hyderabad? ” He knew I was a Hyderabadi and would always remain one at heart.

The Times of India was on the threshold of setting up its full fledged office in Hyderabad and was looking for staff to beef up the facility. I gave Mr Guha a tentative confirmation subject to a visit to the TOI office in Hyderabad. A couple of visits and a month later, I moved lock, stock and barrel to the twin cities, relocating temporarily at my boss’s house in Trimulgherry. My dad had by then sold our house in Jamia Osmania and moved on to Kerala after his retirement. Later I found a rented accommodation in Trimulgherry for half the rent I was paying in Bangalore and a deposit of just two months advance rent. Hyderabad was never known to be expensive.

Later in 2004, I purchased a new two bedroom flat at Alwal on the northern suburbia of Secunderabad for under Rs 8 lakhs. I could not have got this deal in any major Indian city. The Economic Times often published a survey those days which placed Hyderabad among the most economical Indian cities to live in. Funnily, these surveys came out in ET just before our annual increments were due.

Now in 2008, I am wondering if the words of Hyderabad and Secunderabad being a cost-effective city still hold true. The same flat which I bought in 2004 now is valued at 24 lakhs. This is simply unaffordable for a middle class buyer who is looking for a roof over their heads. That is just the start. Rents across the twin cities have gone up ten fold, while land prices are costlier than Paris and London (while infrastructure is nowhere near those cities).

Full page advertisements extol the virtues of gated community complete with golf course, swimming pools, gym and what not. They cost the earth, moon and stars put together. Who is buying these extravagant homes that cost crores of rupees ? Obvioulsy these are people who believe in snob value by paying more than what is required. Or people who have ill gotten wealth and don’t know what to do.

Greedy builders seek out the utopian world for their buyers, lifting pictures from foreign publications and transplanting them on to glossy brochures. Non existent lakes, IT parks which are yet to lay a single brick and on the drawing board Metro rail are touted as the USPs. Builders talk of plots twenty kilometers beyond Shamshabad as if they are in the heart of the city (these plots are actually agricultural lands which are located in Mahabubnagar district). When people hate travelling all the way to new airport, why would anyone in their right sense of mind buy a house in Shamshabad ? Kuktapally, which is one of the most polluted areas in the city with pathetic traffic to boot, is talked about as a paradise on earth. Hyderabad is a plateau and not an island like Mumbai. There is plenty of land to house around 12 lakh families within the city proper.

Why are we being then enticed with castles in the air ? Whom are the builders trying to fool ? Why are we trying to make our city an unaffordable one ? Why kill a goose that lays golden eggs ? Did our builders not learn lessons from a disaster called Bangalore ? Let us get the answers before things get out of hand.