By A. Vijay Vishnu
I came to Bhubaneswar for the first time in about 1992 when it was still a town. I had to take an exam in Utkal University. I remember how desolate the square looked. There were hardly any shops and we stopped at a small roadside eatery for lunch before taking the long trek to the campus.

Later in 1995, I chucked a teaching job in a small college in Jajpur and joined Sun Times, an English language newspaper, which was published from

Bhubaneswar. Those days, CRPF Square was an equally desolate place and there were few shoppers at the adjacent Priyadarshini Market. The best thing about the city was the lack of any traffic on the roads. I thought it had all the amenities of a big city while retaining the charms of small town living.

Then things started happening and the city reinvented itself as an IT destination. More and more software biggies set shop here resulting in an influx of talented manpower from other parts of the country. This coupled with the migration of people from other parts of the state to this city of opportunity has resulted in a significant growth of the population. Thanks to rising disposable incomes, the number of scooters, motorcycles, and cars on the roads has burgeoned resulting in clogged roads.

The other major development, to my mind, is the emergence of the City Of Temples as a City of Learning. Once has to look at the ads placed in local dailies to realise the number of institutions offering technical and management education being set up here. Students from many parts of the country, especially from neighbouring Jharkhand and West Bengal come here for their higher studies. MNCs like Pizza Hut, Café Coffee Day, and Smokin' Joe's have opened their outlets here.

In the next wave, came the malls and the supermarkets. Pantaloons and now, Reliance Fresh have changed the way the city shops. While there is little to differentiate between malls in different parts of the country, the local touch in not entirely lacking. Some of the salesmen at these malls greet you with a respectful 'namaste' to give you the feel of a valued customer in a small 'kirana' store.

People who have lived in Bhubaneswar long enough swear that there is no place like it. The old world charm is still evident in the Old Town area. With its narrow roads, houses huddled together, and small sweetmeat shops, the place exudes a feeling of a bygone world. Old timers recall with fondness the cool breeze that soothed the city in the worst of summer evenings.

The rest of Bhubaneswar is in the process of morphing into a city. The main roads are being constantly widened, the encroachments are being cleared, and walls buildings adjoining the road from the airport to Infocity are being painted with 'pattachitra'. This last feature has lent a highly aesthetic touch and a unique character to the city. Whoever thought of this, deserves unqualified praise.

Problems, however, remain. The lanes in quite a few localities of the city like Sahid Nagar, Nageswar Tangi are full of potholes. Despite Orissa being a power-surplus state, the BJB Nagar area frequently faces power failures. Daylight robberies have become frequent. The Kalinga Nagar area, which is the site of a mega government-housing project, has witnessed quite a few murders in recent times.

What is perturbing to an ordinary citizen is the high cost of land and housing here. The prevailing high rates of both compare unfavourably with those prevailing in cities like Kolkata and Hyderabad. A friend of mine got a bargain when he bought a two-bedroom flat in Kolkata for a measly Rs 6.5 lakh rupees.

He was lucky to get it for such a price, (the market rate was Rs 9 lakhs) he said, because the other residents of the apartment complex put in a good word to the owner. Now, in which area of Bhubaneswar can one hope to get an 800 square feet flat for even Rs 9 lakhs. This coupled with the many fly-by-night operators in the real estate sector makes it impossible for a middle-class family to buy a house or a plot of land. It is high time the authorities did something about it.

Much remains to be done. The first of these would be to develop an efficient rapid mass transport system to unclog the city roads. The administration also needs to take steps to develop the peripheral areas of the city so that all the development isn't concentrated in one place. What are also sorely needed are proactive citizens' groups to work toward making the city a better place to live and work in.

(The writer teaches English in BJB Junior College, Bhubaneswar)