Chandigarh - First visit and thoughts about it's chances of becoming the next IT hub

Being from Punjab and having spent all my childhood in Patiala- barely an hour from Chandigarh- people found it difficult to believe that I'd never been to the city beautiful. So, to put all that talk to rest I decided that I should visit it this time.

The journey was not so comfortable as I was travelling by the notorious Punjab Roadways' bus. Entering Chandigarh from Punjab means I entered Mohali first, those entering from Harayana would encounter Panchkula. Immediatley, the fact that I'm on the verge of entering India's first and only planned city became apparent. All the roads had 'FOOTPATHS'. When some of the more well to do areas of bigger cities lack these, it was indeed a good sign.

The roads are well-maintained and quite neat. The Inter-State buses are not allowed to enter the residential sectors making those roads less congested and safer.

Anyone who is familiar with the government residential colonies, especially in North India could easily mistake the city for one giant residential colony. Red, exposed brick structures seem to be the only familiar to the builders in the city. Sadly, this also means that the city seems to lack a character of it's own, but then maybe this is the character of this city.. albeit a forced one.

The chowks are huge and tastefully decorated, traffic is not a nuisance like in mumbai, pune or bangalore and the roads were pretty smooth and well maintaned. However, what's more heartening is the presence of parks and playgrounds.

Now coming to how well placed chandigarh is for becoming the next big destination for IT companies... I would say that for employees this could be one of the best destinations.

The strong points of Chandigarh are:
1. Accomodation is affordable. However, it can be debated as to for how long it will remain so.

2. It's a clean and green city, there are no traffic hassles and pollution levels are quite low.

3. The presence of prestigious educational institutes, be it schools, colleges or universities. Besides Panjab university in Chandigarh, Punjabi University in patiala is barely an hour's drive.Professional institutes like PEC, Thapar for engineering and University business school for management are amongst well known institutes in the country.

4. The city is at the centre of three states, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal. You could stay in any of the three and easily travel to chandigarh for work.

5. Plenty of talented workforce is available. Chandigarh and Patiala are the known as centres of quality education in Punjab and I am guessing that it's no different for the other two neighboring states also.

However, there are a few areas where there could be some improvement:

1. There's just one mall in the city as far as I know, Dhillon complex in Panchkula, reportedly owned by veteran bollywood actress Poonam Dhillon. There are a couple of more malls and multiplexes under construction though.

2. Public transport, although quite good still needs improvement. However, the distances are short enough for you to travel the length and breadth of the city using your own vehicle.

3. The Airport needs to be upgraded to become an international airport. The connectivity to Delhi airport needs a lot of work.

There are IT parks coming up in Chandigarh as well as Mohali and with a little work this could be the next big destination for the IT industry.

Campus drive at RCET, Bhilai

This is how my vacation started... Syntel had a campus drive planned for Rungta College of Engineering and Technology(RCET) on the 7th and 8th of April and then another one at Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management(LBSIM) on the 27th and 28th of april.

I just thought of clubbing my vacation with these two campuses so as to fly for free ;) but he GRC(Global recruitment cell) spoiled my plan on the very last day. Most probably some bigshot who belongs to delhi gave his name for the technical panel and I was thrown out.

It's kind of irritating that no one gives his name for places like Bhopal, Bhilai and Bhubaneshwar but when it comes to Delhi and Goa the slots are lapped up by managers.

The trip started OK, nothing noteworthy. Manish and Smita from GRC and Shyam, Rajul and I from Delivery were the people chosen for this campus.

The flight was to Raipur and from there we were driven to Bhilai. People staying in Mumbai would really need to see this place to believe it.... bare naked land for as far as you could see.

The drive was alright, the new four lane highway under construction between raipur and Bhilai is really good, very very smooth... I thought it was smoother than the Mumbai Pune expressway.

The hotel we were put up in was quite nice too, I guess the RCET people chose wisely. The hotel had a pool table, a swimming pool, a gym and a TT table. During our stay we couldnt make use of the swimming pool or the gym but played a lot of pool and TT.

Mr. Mehta, a veteran from Bhilai Steel Plant, and Mr. Trivedi, and ex-armyman, were our guides and incharge of almost everything involving us and I must say they were very competent at their work in addition to providing us with good company.

We did make a visit to Bamleshwari Devi Mandir, situated on a hilltop some 60 odd Km from Bhilai, on the day we arrived.

The campus was the usual stuff, nothing remarkable really but he crowd here was way better than the one we had in Oriental Institute, Bhopal. The reason also was obvious... Syntel was the 9th company to arrive for campus at Oriental while at RCET we were 3rd. The difference in quality of candidates was simply too much for this fact to be ignored.

Though we did suspect that the english section of the paper was leaked to the RCET students, some of whom scored excedingly well in that section but it was easy to notice as these were the very people whose english was the worst.

Some of the notable things were:
1. Delicious food... expecially the Dahi-Bhalla and Rasmalai that we had, simply amazing.

2. The Chairman's office, it was bigger than some of the 2 BHK flats that I have seen here in Mumbai.

3. Bad roads. Apart from the Raipur-Bhilai highway, none of the other roads were anything to write home about.

4. Bhilai Steel Plant. As per Mr. Mehta, it employs 13000 people. In comparison, Syntel employs 8.5K people. I think we need more of BSPs if we aim to have a development that is all-inclusive and not limited to a few select cities.

5. Mr. Mehta. The guy was amazing, any place you mentioned he had been there.Most of India and outside India too. Very well-mannered and a thorough gentleman.

Well, after selecting nearly 75 students it was time to leave. I took a flight to delhi and the others flew back to Mumbai.

The next post will deal with what happened on my journey to home.

Back from vacation

Am back from the longest vacation in my professional life, 20 days...!!!

Maybe it's the duration that allowed me to accomplish more than usual this time and I feel compelled to pen down my experiences.

The campus at Bhilai, the trip to delhi and from there to my hometown Tarn Taran, which has become the latest district in the state of punjab, the first visit to Patiala after nearly 8 years and my first visit ever to chandigarh.

There's a lot to say, I cant be sure how much I will be able to blog but with the intention of putting my free time to some good use, I will start as soon as blogspot page comes up on my screen(have been waiting for the last 5 minutes for it to load... using notepad for this post!!!)

Grand Illusions..........

Recently, the firm I work with celebrated 25 years of it's existence... and it was celebrated in a way so grandiose it would've put to shame all the others on the face of this planet...

Exactly on the day, the company turned 25.. sweets were distributed.. no no.. am not talking about box of sweets.. am talking about sweets.. or to be more precise a single piece of sweet...
no problems with that..since it does not provide any Gym so it makes sense not to overfeed the employees...

then came the shower of gifts.. a planner(leather clad .. wow) and a T-shirt with 25 years engraved in golded letters(and hordes of punchlines and logos that would put to shame a F1 rider's attire)

and yes.. with the usual pat on the back... praise for dedicated and hard working employees...

Now contrast this with the IT bellwether of India.. which sometimes proclaims itself(and with some justification) as the most respected company of India... a widfall of 126 Cr for it's employees... and the sweets... the planner and the T-shirt pale in comparison..

and yet.. my firm has the illusions of becoming a leader amongst the next generation of IT companies... and is trying to sell this illusion to the employees as well...