The "Omni" Location CRE Policy

In his paper titled “India: The Past and It's Future”, the ex-governor for the RBI Mr.Raghuram Rajan outlined the socio-economic conditions that would create a situation for the exodus of manpower from the populous hinterland states e.g. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh etc. to coastal states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu in search for better job opportunities. This will create huge stress on the natural resources of these urban centres like Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai etc.

To bring to life the above synopsis I would take the example of Bangalore the ever booming IT hub of India. The city has gone through an incredible transformation from 1998 when I visited the city for the 1st time when it was known as the “Garden City” to now 2020 where it has transformed itself into a concrete jungle struggling and coping to provide its population with basic amenities like sanitation, roads, clean air and water. The natural calmness of a once retirement paradise has been replaced by the hustle-bustle of a cosmopolitan in which people from all over the country are pouring in by the thousands.

Today’s reality is that it takes 3 hours to get to the airport from the farthest end of Bangalore which is longer than the flight duration of any flight within the country from one point to another. Owing to the excessive strain on the road infrastructure employees are spending more time on the roads than at their homes with their families disrupting the work-life balance which they all aspired for.

The situation is grave and is not going to improve if the government and the corporate community alike do not take active measures to handle the situation. From a corporate perspective what I propose is what I call the “Omni Location Policy”, which translates to corporates directing their CRE teams to have local sufficient sized offices in four corners of the city i.e. "Nort-East-West-South". To make this work the government needs to identify SEZs in these corners and provide subsidies for corporates to encourage them to set up offices in these SEZs. What this will do is that depending on a person’s location of work he/she can choose to either stay in that part of the city thereby distributing the working population equally or choose to travel to the closest location to his/her residence.

This approach provides a multitude of sustainability benefits. Let me highlight a few

1. Being closer to work help reduce travel times for employees thereby reducing travel fatigue and help increase work-life balance.
2. Location-independent work will bring in higher acceptability of an organization with its current and prospective workforce.
3. An interconnected road network can be earmarked for office traffic during peak and off-peak hours instead of this traffic choking the entire city.
4. Public transport if developed correctly in the form of dedicated bus routes and metro routes can help reduce individual cars on the road.
5. BCP for organizations would become easier to manage as they can handle site down scenarios more efficiently.
6. Once the working population is distributed equally, the population centres will spread thereby creating more opportunities for work for unskilled or semi-skilled labour force and will reduce strain on natural resources in city centres.
7. The government can focus on providing specialized facilities within these SEZs like supermarkets, hospitals, childcare facilities, schools etc. so that they become a self-contained ecosystem within themselves.
8. A pan-city presence will allow brands to market themselves as great places to work and will give visual presences to their brands

This will however only work when the public-private partnership for long term sustainability is made a priority for all. Initially, even if a SEZ is not possible, larger IT parks can be made part of this initiative to give it a start.....Might be worth giving it a thought.