The proposed peripheral ring road for Mysuru and the cluster development of industries alongside planned by the Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) has raised serious questions over the funding pattern and the eventual beneficiaries.
The MUDA included the PRR in this year’s budget and also announced the cluster development.
Though the concept of PRR is in the making since almost 8 to 10 years, the cluster development is new and entails focused development of identified areas.
The MUDA plans to develop clusters focused on hardware and software on the Mysuru-Bengaluru road junction, educational and health cluster on the Mysuru-Hunsur road junction, IT and BT cluster along Mysuru-Nanjangud road junction, pharmaceutical cluster on the Mysuru-T.Narsipur road junction, garments and apparels cluster on the Mysuru-H.D. Kote road junction, and heritage living and rural sports on the Mysuru-Bannur road junction.
This is akin to zonal regulations within the industrial area which has been thrown to the winds but the concept is being adopted for implementation along the proposed PRR.
While the PRR – which will have a length of 73.25 km - requires 824.06 acres of land, the total land required for town planning scheme including cluster development of industries is pegged at 27,468.75 acres.
For the cash-strapped MUDA, finding over 27,000 acres of land will be difficult and even the cost of compensating the owners will be beyond its means.
Hence MUDA Chairman H.V. Rajeev stated that farmers will be coopted into the project and will be made partners in development. The MUDA will adopt the 50:50 model under which the land owners will get 50 per cent of the developed plot in lieu of compensation for land acquired from them.
For MUDA, it will save hundreds of crores of rupees being the cost of land acquisition while the land owners will get developed sites which they can sell at the prevailing market rate, as per the project promoters.
But questions are being raised as to who will benefit from the project despite MUDA professing that it will be advantageous to the farmers. The argument in favour of the model is based on the premise that the land belongs to the farmers who will stand to benefit from the project, but it is clearly not true.
M. Lakshman of the Congress said bulk of the land in a radius of 25 km to 30 km around Mysuru is held by real estate sharks most of whom are politicians.
‘’So if the MUDA adopts 50:50 model it will benefit the politicians as they will get their land developed at public cost and yet they end up profiting from it without spending a single paisa on plot development’’, he added.
So a perception is taking shape that public money will be spent on enriching private players in real estate field who are also politicians and hence the project is coming under fcriticism.
