Column

Have you been Amdavised? Well, if that word is not already in Global India’s lexicon, it soon will be. A southern city already has started the trend, with Bangalored, which is about people losing their jobs to cost-competitive, IT-savvy Bangalore. It’s about getting benched, laid off, as MNCs start squeezing cost out of their supply chain. In simple words, it’s about globalisation and being prepared for it.

But Amdavised is nothing like that. It’s about being restless; seeking an identity; searching for the next big thing; romancing numbers; talking money; feeling bad about many things but always trying ride the trend. If you were to put all that in a single word, it would sound like entrepreneurship. But it’s not about entrepreneurship alone. I’m not sure whether I can deconstruct the phenomenon entirely. In boom-town Ahmedabad you need a handful of variables to explain why things are rocking the way they are. But let me try to zoom in on one aspect of Ahmedabad by providing an
outsider’s perspective.

Unlike Bangalored, Amdavised is about localisation and driving yourself angry to achieve it. It’s homespun globalisation, the raw energy that makes parts of Ahmedabad look spiffier than Gurgaon. It’s about looking at 2002, the year of Godhra riots, from 2007 — and trying to zip away from it.

It infects a lot of people. Nanu, our chauffeur, was racing away from it, as we sped across the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar highway. “Look to your left”, he said. “Three years ago, there were only fields and cows around. Now, you have big shopping complexes, institutions, housing societies.” Even as Nanu was furiously pointing at everything around, we were sensing the mall-ification of the highway. A handful of malls are dotting the highway and generating enough footfalls even on weekdays. But more are arriving.

This is better than Gurgaon, said a journalist, Mayank, at a conversation later on a changing Ahmedabad. “Think of it. You have road rage, traffic hassles, and poor security, in Delhi and Gurgaon. You can walk around without fear at 2-3am at night in this city. Isn’t that amazing?”

Mayank, who had just arrived from Delhi to report on Ahmedabad’s swinging lifestyles, had more to tell: “Upcoming spas; management graduates with foreign boyfriends; single women who lead hassle-free lives, untroubled by landlords; liberal sexual mores; SUVs — it’s all happening.”

Despite Mayank’s graphic description, you certainly miss the scent of globalisation in Ahmedabad; it perfumes the air in Hyderabad. You run into IT engineers, supply-chain architects, globe-trotting NGO presidents, management gurus, and MNC strategists in India’s second Silicon Valley. You miss them in Ahmedabad.

Is Ahmedabad moving in the right trajectory? Well, when you see somebody reading Ram Charan’s Know-How: The Eight Skills That Separate People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t at Ahmedabad airport, another glued to Alan Greenspan’s The age of Turbulence at a bookshop, and a third glancing through Blue Ocean Strategy in a mall aisle, you wonder whether reading has become far more focused; whether the boom has widened people’s interests; or whether we have completely misread Ahmedabad and Amdavadis.

Yes, Ahmedabad isn’t about money chasing realty and stocks alone. It’s not just about development, but something else. Says Eulalai, a Spanish tourist, “Coming from Spain, where liquor is part of daily routine, it gives me immense pleasure to visit a place where spirits are banned. I am glad that Gandhian philosophy is alive among people here. Frankly, liquor is available in Gujarat. The only difference here is that I cannot drink publicly. But, as a tourist, it’s no big deal.”

These extremes define the city. In its angularities, and a visible urge to do it ‘my way’, Ahmedabad has finally found its differentiation. It has programmed itself to achieve what it has to. But that narrow focus may not give it the breadth of vision. It may just find itself Bangalored in the future; it may lose out to other Indian cities in the race to dominate the supply chain. That’s a global race that Ahmedabad may miss out on, in its hurry.

Email: vinaykamat@dnaindia.net