Nagpur - 9th most competitive city in the country

Our Nagpur has been adjudged as the 9th most competitive City in the country by Institute of competitiveness in a recent survey. Hurray!!!! Please see details here. 
http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-indias-25-most-competitive-cities/20101209.htm

An Infrastructure project can catapult a city and a Nation to prominence

The Erie Canal Project and transformation on New York City

In 1825, Philadelphia was still the largest city in America, with New York City and Boston close behind. But then New York opened the Erie Canal, a massive government project that connected its ports to the Midwest via the Great Lakes. Scorned derisively "Clinton's Folly," or "Clinton's Ditch" after New York Governor and canal proponent DeWitt Clinton, when it opened New York City almost instantly became the greatest boomtown the world had ever seen: "In the early nineteenth century, New York was a large town, but it had a number of peers, including Philadelphia. The key decision that vaulted New York to prominence was the decision to build the Erie Canal. In John Steele Gordon's account of America's rise to an 'empire of wealth,' he noted the importance of that canal. 

The Erie Canal ... turned New York into the greatest boomtown the world has ever known. Manhattan's population grew to 202,000 in 1830, 313,000 in 1840, 516,000 in 1850, and 814,000 in 1860. ... In 1800 about 9 percent of the country's exports passed through the port of New York. By 1860 it was 62 percent, as the city became what the Boston poet and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes (the father of the Supreme Court justice) rather grumpily described as 'that tongue that is licking up the cream of commerce and finance of a continent.' 

These figures are for Manhattan - the surrounding parts of what is now New York City were growing as well. This explosion was all due to the Erie Canal. Before the canal, it had taken three weeks at a cost of $120 to move a ton of flour from Buffalo to New York City. After the canal's construction, it took eight days and cost $6. Gordon remarked that, before the canal was even completed, 'the Times of London saw it coming, writing that year [1822] that the canal would make New York City the 'London of the New World.' The Times was right. It was the Erie Canal that gave the Empire State its commercial empire and made New York the nation's imperial city. That was when the position of New York as an economic powerhouse was first firmly established, and the title has yet to be relinquished. " 

- Douglas Wilson 
Excerpts from 'Five Cities That Ruled The World'

IMHO, for our own city Nagpur to become a Tier I city in the nation MIHAN project will be it. Let us all contribute in our own ways towards making MIHAN successful. 

"NAGPUR - A GLOBAL CITY BY 2020"

Jai Nagpur - Jai Hind 

First get together of NF @ Nagpur

Post by: Rahul.Bagdia@pManifold.com

The first formal Get Together of Nagpur First took place on Saturday April 17th from 5:30 pm onwards. There were 12 members present during the call including one of founders, Dinesh Jain who participated thru Skype.

It was great to know the details of initiation by so many NF founding members to make time for actively championing the issues of their city and joining hands for finding solution instead of criticizing, blaming and/or passing the buck to the government.

The clear action items laid out for NF reflect the high level thinking and efforts that have gone in formalizing this platform. Now the base foundation being kept, its time for building over it and sustaining it. Best participation would be if we can align the cause identified by NF in our businesses and take responsibility for them.

Let us use this blog thread to discuss the meeting notes for this first get together and more importantly what role WE all (each one of us) could play.

1. There is work going on to make Nagpur as sister city to 3 International cities. It would be great if a clear charter and check list of this could be created and posted on website, so that we localites can start filling the checklist items and then with a full fledge back-end supported project, we approach required agencies. Mr. Dinesh Jain could initiate this white paper and we will all support.

2. Mihan needs a boost from us too. One way suggested was good national/global enterprises can start operating from MIHAN. But what is needed to attract these agencies to MIHAN? I tend to believe that there is huge information gap in this space. There is a need for a serious gap identification in this regard and host a good information portal for MIHAN. Local MBA and Engineering schools talents could be engaged to build this information base, provided it could be monetized.

3. Similar feasibility analysis needs to be done for bringing big projects like Boeing and FedEx @ MIHAN.

pManifold Business Solutions (www.pmanifold.com) can start looking in to support items 2 & 3, if NF can help with linkages to build revenue model for this consulting engagement.

Similarly there were other good ideas like to start an incubation center out of VNIT, starting orange food processing plants and many others. What needs to be done is putting a short description of these projects and build over them to collect more like minded people to get momentum on them. Dinesh put it rightly that NF needs more champions for a cause and we could be doing it collaboratively.

It is good to take a pause and think what stops an IDEA to become REAL. As Dinesh told one gets  limited to pull any big effort all by himself, we all face similar constraints to go out of our own scope of work and our own fear of how much work it might involve and if we could get support. Most time we end up doing merry go round discussions trying to get information or support in the form of linkages and partnerships. May be even putting up a white paper by itself is a daunting task to evade many of us. So how could collaboratively and in an organized fashion, we can achieve results by hitting small milestones spread between many? I don't have an answer, but slowly at pManifold we have started realizing that this type of effort is very much needed and remain common to success of most projects. "Effective Collaboration" is what we need to figure out how to achieve at NF. Regular participation through focused and well organized (in terms of follow-up) blogging will be the first step. Lets make small efforts to share our NF related ideas in this blog in a meaningful way to be used by itself as a repository and credentials of our work together.

Post by: Rahul.Bagdia@pManifold.com

Vidharbha State

A couple of email chains last few weeks made me curious. Specially the one where it was reported that Sangli got a better deal over Nagpur for maintaining its Tigers. Ye, I did not even know Sangli had Tigers!

Anyhow, the question worth pondering over is, whether a separate Vidharbha is a solution for these kind of issues.

Is it about time?

You can vote on the left rail of this blog. There are three choices.

Please add your comments below this post if you have any ideas/thoughts/opinion on this issue.

Treasure Hunt

I am a unique educational institution, one of it's kind, in the entire nation. I provide Bachelor's degree to tomorrow's brave young men who take on serving one of the most adventurous fields in modern society. I started in as early as 1950 and am a peerless gem in your city's crown.

Who am I?

Open Thread

Howz everyone doing? It's been a while since someone said something. Since we all Nagpuris cannot physically meet, I thought, why not open up this blog (for once) to the entire forum.

As in, by calling it an Open Thread, I, a co-editor, for this blog, won't say much, but instead all of us on the forum will have a chance to speak out.

And you can pick up anything under the sun, or from your hat. From IPL, to the latest happenings in Nagpur, to issues facing India, or anything you feel is important and needs visibility.

Please use the comment section under this post to have your views spelt out. If this "Open Thread" experiment is successful, we'll make it more frequent. So let's give it a shot. What say you?

Treasure Hunt

"I am the only big Park in East of the city. I hosted the Indian National Congress's meeting in 1955. I also gave Nagpur it's first swimming pool in early 50s. Today I own a musical fountain too. Who am I?"


Note: Please respond on comment section of this post instead of email/yahoogroup. Thanks.

Mr. Ashok Easwaran

Folks, we are pleased to have a remarkable Nagpuri amongst us at Nagpur First - Mr. Ashok Easwaran.

Mr Easwaran is currently working as Editor of an Indian American weekly published from Chicago and also writes for the Indo-Asian News Service.

Mr. Easwaran is a true blue Nagpuri, with core Nagpuri sensibilities. He grew up in Nagpur and did his education in SFS school,G.S College and PG in Management and Journalism from Nagpur University.

His career as a Journalist associated him with various renowned media houses like Indian Expresss, The Daily and Deccan Herald in Mumbai. Of course he is proud of the fact that the foundation of his illustrous career was laid in his home town, Nagpur, where he started it all at The Hitvada under veteran journalists Mr M Y Bodhankar and the late Mr G T Parande.

He worked with the South Asia bureau of India Abroad at New Delhi before moving to Houston and later to Chicago.

He has been kind enough to grant us his permission to publish one of his article on our blog. Since getting the format right with PDF on blog was tough, I thought it would be prudent to upload the article on googlesites. This would do more justice to it, than me trying to format and present it on the blog.

I am sure you all will enjoy!

http://sites.google.com/site/nagpur1st/mr-ashok-easwaran-article-1

Nagpuri Tadka

Hello Nagpuris, I am sharing a nice Nagpuri Tadka, which I received as a forward from a Mumbaikar.
नागपुरी तडका : बिपाशाले लुगडं


शाम्यानं इचीबैन, कहरच केला

बिपाशासाठी मुंबैले, लुगडं घेवुन गेला....


त्याले वाटलं मायबाप, भलते गरिब असन,

म्हुन तिले आंगभर, कपडे भेटत नसन,

वाढलीहूढली पोरगी, तरणीबांड दिसते,

इकडं झाकाले गेली, तं तिकडं उघडं पडते,

म्हुन त्यानं कपड्याचा, थैला भरुन नेला....



जुहुच्या चौपाटीवर, भेट त्यायची झाली,

तिले पाहुन शाम्याची, बंदी विकेट गेली,

तिले म्हणे चोळी घाल,घे लुगडं नेसुन,

थे म्हणे आवमाय, हे भुत आलं कुठुन ?

मंग जुहूवर धमासान, तमाशा सुरु झाला...



लय वळवलं तिचं मन, पण मन नाय वळे,

मंग शाम्या धावे मांगं, आनं थे पुढं पळे,

वन्समोअर,वन्समोअर, लोकं भाय बोंबले,

कॅमेरेवाले पोझ घेवुन,कॅमेरे रोखुन थांबले,

पोलीसायनं बैनमाय,नावकुल विचका केला,

आनं त्याच्यापुढचा एपीसोड, राहुनच गेला.....



.........................................

ढोबळ मानाने शब्दार्थ :-

इचीबैन, बैनमाय = च्यायला सारखे.

वाढलीहूढली = वयात आलेली.

बंदी = पुर्ण,संपुर्ण.

आवमाय = अग्गबाई

मांगं = मागे

नावकुल = पुर्णपणे.

.........................................
लेखक - गंगाधर मुटे
Disclaimer: We have received this कविता as a forward and are reproducing here. Mr. Mute claims to have written it and hence we are providing his name here.

CNBC Discussion : Nagpur an IT Destination

Unfortunately I am not able to embed the Video on this blog; so I am just adding the url here

http://www.moneycontrol.com/video/special-videos/mihannagpur-the-ideal-business-hub-_439261.html

I liked the candid argument made by Mr. Kulkarni of Persistent Systems for why young talent from Nagpur takes a flight to other 'cooler' or metropolitan destinations.

Sachin Pilot spoke pretty well and he looks like a minister who can fit into his father's dynamic legacy.

Mr. Asim Gupta should be congratulated for promoting Nagpur so well.

Overall I liked the CNBC snippet.

Thanks to Mr. Vikram Bobade for passing on this link to the Nagpur First Group.

Nagpur International Marathon 2010

Since last year, January 30, the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi is an increasingly special day for all the Nagpuris as around that day the annual Nagpur International Marathon is organized in support of the principles of Peace and Non-violence. This time it was organized on last Sunday, January 31, 2010. It was the second year of the marathon with hundreds of thousands of people participating right from children to people in their eighties, and from bureaucrats to businessmen to politicians and even military organizations.

Nagpur First was honored last year as Mr. Sharad Bhagwatkar, 68 years young father of Vivek Bhagwatkar, one of the founders of NF, represented us in the last year’s run by running the full marathon! I also tried participating in the event last year but chose not to after reaching at the venue to find chaos when nobody seemed to know what was going on there. This year the event looked much better organized starting with proper arrangements for parking of vehicles to signs marking starting and ending points for various races and the roadmap for full and half marathons clearly displayed at various prominent places along the route. Almost all major businesses and organizations in the city supported the event with sponsorships. People were also seemed much better prepared for the event this time and I feel it shall go on becoming more interesting and grand event with each passing year.

Nagpur-First participated this year too with 8 of us (see photo) running the Ahinsa Daud (non-violence run) of 3 KMs from the Kasturchand Park to Yeshwant Stadium via Akashvani square, Institute of Science, RTM Nagpur University, Variety square, Munje Square, Zansi Rani Sqaure, Panchsheel square and finally Yeshwant stadium. For the first time I climbed on the ‘steps’ for the audience to sit inside the Yeshwant stadium, to watch the participants completing the marathon arriving with huge applause from the crowd. There was also a band playing at the center of the stadium and a music program by upcoming singers.

I personally felt much better connected with our beloved city, its people and its culture while running with the crowd. It was a wonderful experience and I look forward to running a longer distance next year with a larger group.

We at Nagpur-First are also planning to organize a 10 KM Heritage walk from the Kasturchand Park to Futala Talao and back, sometime around Oct-Nov this year. Ajit Kulkarni proposed the idea and he may champion the initiative with support from other members of Nagpur-First. Looking at the success of the International Marathon, I am encouraged. Let’s gear up to make the heritage run a grand success in its first year.

IDCA

Dinesh and I were lucky to be invited to an IDCA meet this Saturday at Oak Brook near Chicago. IDCA stands for 'India Development Coalition of America'. It's a forum (or a coalition as they like to call) of different groups/organisations that are helping India's development directly or indirectly.

Dinesh Jain, our founder, was invited as one of the speakers this week. And goes without saying, he gave a sterling performance. (And may be I am biased, but judging by audience response, I could say his presentation was the best amongst the lot)

I particularly liked his notion of 'Self Interest'; something that really connected well with the gathering. Dinesh said - "For anything to work there has to be a self interest involved. It's how you define 'self' that matters. Self can include only me, or me and my family, or me and my family and my community, or me, my family, my community, my city, my country and so on'

The point was well made. That without self interest, you cannot be motivated enough to make a difference.

During the Q&A session, after Nagpur First presentation, there were a few in the audience who talked enthusiastically of their indirect association with Nagpur and had some positive things to say about our beloved city. One such Gentleman who was not really from Nagpur but had worked in NEERI for a few years said : "The People of Nagpur are honest and simple. And it's a great city to be in"

That really warmed the cockles of my heart. The anchor of the session Mr. Thatte also mentioned his association with Nagpur and said there are more well wishers for Nagpur than we can think.

Amongst the other presenters, I particularly like Dr. Rajaram's take on Solid Waste Management. During the course of presentation the speaker mentioned about one Mr.Srinivasan, who's done some amazing work in Vellore in Tamil Nadu. Srinivasan has used common sense solution for a major problem in India which is Waste Management. Currently Delhi Municipal Corporation is dealing with a huge problem with this and the High Court has already ordered Delhi not to use any more land for waste dump.

Mr. Srinivasan's common sense solutions can help them in true sense. And so can it help Nagpur. I spoke to one Mr. Bhaskar who was representing another organisation called 'AID' and asked him if we can get in touch with Srinivasan. His team has a sustainable economic model for Waste Management. In fact their model generates lot of employment apart from cleaning up the city. For example, for a community of 300 people, this model can generate an employment of 6 persons and can generate an income of 20,000 p.m in India. Do the math for a larger community like Nagpur.

I also got to know that, Mr. Srinivasan is a simple person who is helping his community. He does not have a fancy website or a degree in management or anything, nor does he charge consulting fees etc. He is simple Indian, living in a small town and helping his community. (These,IMHO, are real heroes of India and not the one's who color your TV screens with glamor, like in the new Mile Sur..ad)

Waste Management, I feel, can be a pre-cursor for Nag-Pure, or the purification of Nag river. By isolating Organic waste, we can generate clean energy that can be recycled into the local economy. Although this was always known, we now have a sustainable model to deal with this. And the model is only maturing.

I think Nagpur should take advantage of this and should aim to become India's First Clean Energy Compliant City.

Quiz of the week

Without googling/wikipeding, name this great Nagpuri personality..

He is the only person who served on all of these three posts :

1] The Chief Justice of India,
2] The Vice President of India,
3] The President of India..

There's another big first to his name. But if I give that clue, it will make it simple.

O Paar!!

Yesterday at work, I had some trash talk with a co-worker. It was real fun.

This guy is originally from Gujarat. We both started bragging about our kite flying skills and the trash talking won't stop. We challenged each other for a pecha and I told him, I, a Nagpuri is going to kick his snooty Ahemdabadi ass. (They think their kite flying skills are the best)

Finally people around us asked us, "why don't you guyz have a showdown". On a side note why do 'goras' have this obsession with showdown I wonder? People even said they'll have a wager on us and nominated someone to be a bookie.

Ya right! A kite "pechaa" in Chicago winter. That will work just fine, no?

Anyhow, so that talk made me nostalgic a bit. I always thought Sankrant in Nagpur is different than other places. It has it's own charm.

While the boys of the house are up on the terrace all day, well late into the evening, the female members are busy with a Maharashtrian ritual - Haldi Kumkum.

The best thing about Nagpuri Sankrant of course is the Nagpuri Lingo associated with it.

For example, who names a kite - 'Khada Sabbal Muchcha Khada'. Sounds like a stud's name. Or 'Bhangdar Tokdar'!! Whoa, that's some thought put in a name.

But that's Nagpur for you. Pure and unadulterated and completely uninhibited.

In school we used to play Girgot. That was a T-20 version of Kite flying, without a kite of course. BTW, that also tells how intense we were for Kites during those days. If you can't fly kite, well let's make do with a Girgot during lunch break.

"O Paar" was Nagpur's official war cry during the kite flying days. It's intensity of course peaked on 14th Jan when you could hear this on a very high frequency at even higher decibel. The local neighborhood rivalries that got build up during the pre-Sankrant season reached it's summit on Sankrant day when the rival groups would prepare that deadly manja late into 13th evening to be all set for next day.

I still remember how each segment of my index finger would have bleeding cuts, because of the sharp thread, by the time 14th Jan came. But that was little or no hindrance to go up on the roof and get my favorite "cheel" to fly high. Such were the passions.

Anyhow, it was then. I think the Kite culture in Nagpur has taken a beating. I have not seen Nagpuri Sankrant for a very long time now. More than decade actually. So who knows.

But I would leave you all with some 'Made in Nagpuri' words for Sankranti...

- Laggi, Saddi, Luddi, Saitee, Relle, Dabbedar, Kanna, Suttar, Ragga...

{please feel free to add more to this list.. in comments..}

O Paar!!!

Treasure Hunt # 2

Clue of the week:

I am older than most institutes you can think of. I have a massive clock on the tower thats visible from foothills. And yes. From my premises you can get a Grand view of Nagpur city.

Branding Nagpur

Year ends / New years are great. People usually take off for a quick break/vacation and in most places its a great time to be outside. (Unless of course, you are stuck in Chicago snow blizzard)

We are already into 2010. Boy, what a decade this past one has been! Time magazine called it a "decade from Hell". After reading that article I sure thought it was.

We are into the 2 digits of the new century. That means we have 10 more years to achieve what we have set out to - making Nagpur a Global City.

Something struck me while I was reading an in flight magazine last week on my return flight back from the vacation. I saw that the small Arkansas town called 'Little Rock' had a brief paid advertising section in the flight magazine. It ran for about a couple of pages and I was intrigued by the information it had about this city.

For example, Little Rock has the 4Th best Economy in the US..(Did not see that coming). And it added 10,000 new jobs just last year. (By US standards, 10K is very high) Who would have thought that? Honestly before reading this, all I knew about Little Rock was that it was capital city of Arkansas; a state not on most people's radar.

I have a feeling the City Authorities of Little Rock are out there to brand it as a 'happening town'. And hence these paid ads. To make LR visible on the people's radar such branding activities are needed. The ad talked of, the great health care system that LR has, the great college culture it has, it talked of the new Clinton Library etc. Basically focusing on all positive aspects of that sleepy little town.

I liked the spirit of that article. It left me feeling positive about Little Rock.( And no, I am not packing my bags and going there. Chicago is just fine)

All those things that were said about LR, had me thinking, "how about our own little rock there in central India, huh?". How can we best BRAND Nagpur in coming years? I know it has similar positives. It has better than average Health Care system vis-a-vis other Indian cities. It has great college culture too. There may be few other similarities.

I think to make Nagpur visible in grand scheme of things, we'd have to brand it in a certain way. Something that should be appealing. For many people Nagpur may be a sleepy mid-tier city. But for many others that could actually be a plus. Slow, laid back, yet fun.

Should we form a team of people who can come up with ideas to Brand Nagpur? I think we should. Lets have a focus group to discuss how Nagpur can best be put on the Global Radar. Lets call it Branding Nagpur.

If you feel you have that zeal of a Marketing/Advertising genius, please come forward and add your vision for the same.

Lets make 2010 the year of 'Branding Nagpur'... and let's have a Nagpuri Buzz out there. What say you?