MUMBAI - Red-coated specters haunting old Fort St George by the Bay of Bengal
in Chennai, formerly Madras, would be happy. The 350-year-old stronghold, now
the seat of local government, was the first British Empire fortress in India.
The imperialists have been long kicked out, but Chennai is regaining its
stronghold status with a slew of major deals. Last month the government of
Tamil Nadu state, of which Chennai is capital, announced a memorandum of
understanding with South
Asia's largest vehicle-manufacturing consortium.
The consortium of Mahindra and Mahindra (India), Renault (France) and Nissan
(Japan), the first of its kind in South Asia, will set up an integrated
automobile-making unit with an initial investment of about US$897.2 million to
roll out utility vehicles and cars. To be located at Oragadam near Chennai, the
unit will be the biggest vehicle-manufacturing center at a single location in
the country.
Such deals could be more commonplace in Chennai, a southern Indian metropolis
that seems a halfway living station between the hyper-energy and relentless
ambition driving Mumbai and the deep cultural anchor of Kolkata. According to
India's official pre-budget Economic Survey, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry (a
former French colony) together accounted for $1.63 billion (6.5%) of foreign
investments, a figure that could double shortly. If India is the world's
sleeping giant awakening, Chennai could be India's sleeping foot stirring,
increasingly getting attention from local and global investors.
"Chennai's growth has been phenomenal in recent years," local businessman
Vivish George told Asia Times Online. "The city has expanded by about 85
kilometers. The challenge is a shortage of workforce as the city's economy is
booming and there are more jobs at hand. A restriction on business growth is
getting vacancies filled."
Sure enough, other big projects are taking life. Vehicle maker Mahindra is also
planning a Mahindra Research Valley in the Mahindra World City near Chennai.
The project is expected to add a whopping $4 billion a year to Tamil Nadu's
gross domestic product (GDP). Additional investment from vendors and supporting
service providers is expected to amass about $2.2 billion.
The Tamil Nadu government is also building an "IT corridor" on the outskirts of
Chennai, another Indian Silicon Valley in the making. This forest of
information-technology companies is expected to create 300,000 additional jobs.
The local Highways Department is speeding up work on an IT highway to connect
the IT corridor with the rest of the city. The IT corridor and related
infrastructure are expected to be ready this August.
Such developments have changed and raised the city's profile, besides sending
real-estate prices through the roof. Still, rentals are very low compared with
other leading Asian cities. A two-story bungalow with a garden can be rented in
suburban Tiruvanmayur for $270 a month.
A visitor to Chennai after 10 years, as was the case of this correspondent, can
be astonished at how much the city has changed: flyovers, glitzy shopping
malls, cleaner roads and greater expectations. From being a region whose
inhabitants have often been the butt of jokes elsewhere in the country
(southern Indians are usually lumped together as "Madrasis", particularly
because of the accent in which they speak Hindi, as well as eating and dress
habits) the city now wears a quiet confidence, wielding not just serious
economic muscle but political power.
The state's ruling Dravida Munnetra Kalagam (DMK) is a key partner in the
ruling coalition in the central government. India's successful young
information and communications minister, Dayanidhi Maran, is the grandson of
the state chief minister, Muthuvel Karunanidhi.
Karunanidhi, 82, a poet and former movie scriptwriter, is now in his fifth term
as chief minister, for the past two decades gleefully throwing out the
incumbent government and alternating with his arch-rival Jayalalitha Jayaram, a
former top movie heroine in the 1970s and leader of the All India Anna DMK.
Jayalalitha, South Asia's version of Imelda Marcos, took over the party mantle
after a brief power struggle following the death of her co-star, the party
founder, former chief minister and movie idol M G Ramachandran or MGR. The
dashing MGR, who initiated a state-sponsored nutritious-noon-meal scheme for
schoolchildren, a program now widely adopted across India, was one of the first
actor-politicians in the world to assume a major office and never lost an
election until his death in 1987. Following in his footsteps, leading Tamil
movie stars invariably join a political party or start their own, giving the
state's politics a peculiar circus-like atmosphere unmatched anywhere else in
the world.
Karunanidhi, besides indulging in many populist schemes including giving free
color TVs to poverty-stricken families, has in his current spell as chief
minister been energetically making the state investor-friendly to IT majors, so
much so that questions now fly whether Bangalore, India's original Silicon
Valley and the dictionary word for outsourcing (Bangalored), is losing ground
to Chennai. Leading IT companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys,
HCL Technologies and other global IT giants such as Ford Information
Technology, Verizon, iSoft etc are upgrading their Chennai presence or starting
major new ventures.
TCS, India's leading company, will open its largest development center in
Chennai and will hire 8,000 software workers over the next 18 months. Mumbai,
with about 6,000 TCS workers, gets relegated to second place.
"Foreign direct investment in Chennai is very satisfactory," R Subramanium,
secretary general of the Madras Chamber of Commerce, told ATol. "Per capita
income in Tamil Nadu has tripled in recent years and savings comprise one-third
of income. So the potential for much more growth is there."
Vivek Harinarain, the state IT secretary, told the media that he is "very
bullish" on Tamil Nadu's IT prospects, with the state opening up another 4
million square feet (371,600 square meters) of space for IT and software
companies.
An IT industry analyst pointed out that these IT companies do not have a mere
presence in Chennai, but their operations there are the largest or the
second-largest in India or in the world.
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