Bhubaneshwar is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Orissa. Renowned German architect Otto Konigsberg designed the modern city of Bhubaneshwar in 1946. The city is also referred as the “Temple City of India” as it contains a large number of Hindu temples.
Bhubaneshwar was essentially designed to be a residential city having outlying industrial areas. Until the 1990s the city didn’t have any major investor and was dominated mainly by Public Sector Units, small scale and retail manufacturing. Today, Bhubaneshwar is one of the most preferred investment destinations of India.
Bhubaneshwar is ranked the 5th fastest growing Indian city in terms of real estate. It has the sacred towns of Puri and Konark and attracts many pilgrims and tourists every year.
Transport Infrastructure
Bhubaneshwar has well-developed roadways and houses the headquarters of the Orissa State Road Transport Corporation (OSRTC). Even the headquarters of the East Coast Railway is located in Bhubaneshwar. Through the daily express, passenger and weekly trains it is connected to major Indian cities such as Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Gwalior, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bhopal, Jaipur and Ujjain.
Bhubaneshwar also houses Orissa’s only domestic airport, the Biju Patnaik Airport, also called as the Bhubaneshwar airport. It has regular flights to major Indian destinations.
Economy
Bhubaneshwar has emerged to be one of the fastest developing semiconductor and IT hubs of India. The state government has furthered the IT growth in Bhubaneshwar by building IT parks such as Infocity 1 and the new Infocity 2. The Info City was conceptualized as a 5-star IT park, as per the Export Promotion Industrial Parks (EPIP) Scheme.
Bhubaneshwar also houses reputed IT companies such as Satyam Computer Services Ltd., and Infosys, which have been in Bhubaneshwar since 1996-97. In February 2008, another esteemed company, Wipro, started its operation in Bhubaneshwar. This state has also earned an extraordinary distinction of being the first city to accommodate the top four Indian IT companies, namely Infosys, TCS, Mahindra Satyam and Wipro.
In addition, it has also attracted foreign companies such as Nethawk (Finnish Telecommunication Company), IBM, Robert Bosch and Gennum Corporation (Canada).
Future Plans for the City
The Vision 2030 and Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) framed by the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning at IIT Kharagpur, ideates integration of two big cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar into a single 720 sq. Km Urban Complex.
This Vision 2030 aims at transforming Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar into a world-class urban center to create attractive investment opportunities from both, domestic and overseas sources.
The Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) strives to create textile parks and prime urban centers in the Bhubaneswar – Cuttack Urban Complex. It also envisages promoting intra-regional mass transportation networks through better airway and railway connections. It also aims at promoting tourism through film city projects, theme parks and travel circuits such as art villages, nature trails and Palace-on-Wheels.
The CDP has also suggested the creation of theme oriented cities on the lines of education, health and software. A Special Tourism Park is also expected to facilitate tourism in the Bhubaneswar-Puri-Konark Corridor.
By drawing a talent pool of around 50,000 general and 20,000 technically qualified graduates in Orissa, the city aims to export software worth approx. $1000 million by 2011-2012.