Building The Future

- Neha Gupta Kapoor

Once you cross over Sabarmati river from Ahmedabad, there is a visible drop in traffic as you make your way down PDPU road towards GIFT City. It is situated just before Gandhinagar. Scenes of cars hurriedly overtaking others in a disorderly manner are replaced by serene village life where people are peacefully walking to their destination in a single file. The only lawbreakers are cows, some of whom decide to randomly sit in the middle of the road to ruminate.

The final three minutes of my drive to GIFT City is green. A straight road flanked by thick vegetation on both sides ends at the guarded North Gate. I’m asked the name of the person I want to meet and venue of the meeting. Once inside the manmade “city”, I pass acres of empty plots and the occasional building — some operational, others under construction.

At the lobby of the Tower One building, I’m asked to sign a register before being given a badge, and then told to wait for lift #3. There is no panel with buttons inside the lift, which has been pre-programmed to take me up directly to the 28th floor. I would learn more about GIFT City at its corporate office here. In the future, as the city develops further, these visitor badges will have an electronic chip that helps security monitor the user’s whereabouts within the city.

INCEPTION

Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) was conceptualised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his term as the chief minister of Gujarat. In mid-2011, the state government allotted 886 acres of uncultivated land for this project, and a few months later, in 2012, its levelling and development began.