Lavasa

05 June, 2010

World Environemnt Day! A morning with Pune weekend traffic, which was actually not so bad. Pune traffic seemed graceful in many ways - silent (no horns aka Ahmedabad) and mostly disciplined - a breeze compared to the aggressive ness one faces in Ahmedabad. Post lunch we planned a trip to Lavasa - one of India's latest private hill station. Located near the Mulshi Dam, it occupies an entire valley between two hills in the Sahyadris. As one stood at the gateway to Lavasa- Dasve on the ridge, one could see the entire valley bustling with construction activity. How does one start comprehending such a humongous private leisure space? To me, this is the epitome of capitalist greed - land grabbing has never been done in a more stylist manner! Lavasa can be rightly termed as the SEZ of townships: a land bank for the rich to get richer, only this provides the cover of a home-stay rather than some 'industry' for the betterment of the country. It never gets more shameless than this - Amby valley was a privately held and privately managed space, not like an SEZ. Lavasa, on the other hand, is promoted as a management of Govt. held enterprise. Since when does the government, and especially one that doesn't even acknowledge the right to a house, invest itself in luxury hill stations for the rich. The last government that India saw indulge in such activities was when it was a slave to the mighty British empire - the white sahibs in their summer hideouts in the hills commanding the common man below. How different is this picture than that - houses that cost an arm and a leg, around an artificial water body, in a private valley - albeit all funded by the government coffers!!! There is hardly anything to bring home about the architecture or the masterplan - except for the features of the water body and the valley - both being natural gifts the region does not have any dearth of. So, as a commercial project, what are they selling? Nothing at all - there is no USP - there is just a simple transfer of land from the common land bank to the private elite, and control over one very important future resource - part of the water that is supplied to Pune city. That seems to be the hidden USP of the project when one sees increasing water shortage in our country. 

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