Om jagdish-ayo namah

Like a pair of spoilt kids they have almost pulled it off. I mean Wipro and Infosys. When every industry purchases land in Kolkata at market rates, the duo refuse flatly presumably on the ground that their appetite is considerably bigger than others, and so why ask the rate applicable for others!

The ‘point’ is taken by the government. Which is why some frantic searches later, it has come up with 330 acres of ‘unbroken greens’ – the term borrowed from Dec 18 ET on which this post is based – at Jagadishpur.

ET informs the piece of land is a flat open countryside, much the same as Konappana, Agrahara, and Doddathogur villages where Bangalore’s Electronic City stands.

There may perhaps be other similarities. For example the quantum of land each of the 2 behemoths is likely to occupy. Between them, the 2 are said to be looking for about 150 acres, Infosys about double that of Wipro.

If so, nearly half of the proposed electronics city at Jagadishpur will belong to just 2 companies. It’s interesting because going by the ET report, out of 330 acres, 160 will be the core IT zone while the remaining 170 acres will see an integrated IT township coming up like swanky malls, hotels, plexes and so on that will serve the needs of the techies working in the core zone.

Now if Infosys has 100 acres to itself, it is likely that it’ll build all the ‘support’ facilities within its campus so that they don’t in the normal circumstance need to hire the outside supports. The same perhaps goes for Wipro as well.

Does that mean that the so-called IT township will cater only to those IT companies that will be holed up in just 10 acres of land because that is what will be left after the 2 biggies have their share out of 160 acres earmarked for the purpose?

We’ll know that as the situation develops. Meanwhile, for those who may be thinking where Jagadishpur is, well, the soon-to-be coveted place is 18 km beyond Rajarhat, 12 km from the airport, and 20 km from the Saltlec electronics complex that has not an inch to spare.

Here now are images of 2 landmark buildings at Saltlec Sector V (top: Millennium Tower; bottom: Infinity Tower 2). They are big and they house many IT companies, but they by themselves are not as big as to qualify for the biggies.