1. Jostling in: Commuters on the Barakhamba-Dwarka line. Apparently, 5 lakh passengers ride up and down this line every day 2. Kolkata Metro: India's first, but upstaged by Delhi's more modern metro 3. Booming West Delhi: Real estate prices have soared in Dwarka

NEW DELHI
January 19, 3 p.m.

Ever since prime minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated late last month Delhi Metro's Line 3 that connects Barakhamba in the heart of capital's Connaught Place and Dwarka, arguably Asia's largest housing colony in the western outskirts of the city, there has been a spate of VIP joy rides on Delhi Metro Rail. The list includes Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Taro Aso, Ireland's Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, the judges of Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

As a business reporter, my interest in the metro goes beyond its novelty (besides, Metro's phase I is three years old now). I want to find out just how much has India's showcase project transformed lives of people in the capital. There's only one way to find out. I decide to take a ride on the newly opened section to and from Dwarka. My boarding station: Jhandewalan, which is a two-minute walk from my office. First impressions: The escalator at the station isn't working yet and some final finishing work is still going on, but the platform itself is neat and clean.

I haven't been waiting for more than three minutes when the Korean-built rolling stock glides into the station. There's an assortment of passengers waiting to board at Jhandewalan this Friday afternoon: school children, housewives, junior executives, and men who look like petty traders. The train doors open, and a gaggle of men, women, children spills out on to the platform. I get in and choose to stand in one corner since that gives me a 360-degree view.

Cutting through the heart of West Delhi and stopping for an average of 20 seconds at each of the 20 stations in between, the electric train puts me at Dwarka's sector 15 terminal station in all of 40 minutes. During the journey I've been chatting up a few co-passengers like D Murli, an agency officer at ICICI Prudential, located in the same building where my office is. He tells me that commuting has become a pleasure after the Metro opened. Earlier it would take him anywhere between an hour-and-a-half and two hours to reach Janakpuri from Connaught Place either by car or bus. Now it takes less than 20 minutes.

To me, it's evident that the Metro is changing or will change Delhi (In fact, it's impacting the rest of the country too; I'll come to that in a bit). Over the past decade, the capital city had lost out to suburbs like Gurgaon, Noida and Greater Noida, all of which have been transformed by a boom in real estate developments. A whole lot of it companies, BPOs and MNCs shifted to or set up their offices in Gurgaon and Noida, and a residential boom had blossomed alongside in these suburbs. By contrast, Delhi hardly saw any new residential development, except for Dwarka, which had a low 20 per cent occupancy until last year. As for commercial projects, only a couple of them are coming up in select areas like Saket and Vasant Kunj.

That may be about to change. As the Metro line neared completion, Dwarka's occupancy doubled to 40 per cent in the last few months, while real estate prices shot up by more than 30 per cent. "The price of a Rs 25-lakh apartment has gone up to Rs 30 lakh in Dwarka in the last two or three months alone," says Sandeep Saini, a local real estate broker. "Once the metro line extends to the heart of Dwarka, expected by March, the prices will shoot up another Rs 5 lakh to 10 lakh," he says.

But the biggest impact of Metro is retail development and it's happening across all the major centres like Janakpuri, Shivaji Place, Jasola and Shahadra in the Delhi Metro corridor. For instance, Janak Place (the Janakpuri commercial complex owned by Delhi Development Authority) had been lying neglected for years due to a lack of retail interest. "Now we see a lot of action there," says Aniruddh Wahal, Associate Director, Jones Lang Lasalle, a real estate consultancy. He adds it's likely that BPOs and it firms may look at setting up shop in these metro corridors, since it's far cheaper than running operations in Gurgaon and Noida. "Shahadra is a great destination for a BPO. It's well-connected to Delhi University and also Noida," he says. Plus, BPOs can save on transport costs, which, in Gurgaon, is equal to the real estate costs.

Phase I of Delhi Metro has three lines: a Blue Line that connects Barakhamba Road with Dwarka; Yellow runs between Central Secretariat and Delhi University's North Campus, and Red connects Shahadra in East Delhi to Rithala in North. The Red Line will be fully operational by March. The plan is to have 245 kilometres of rail network (consisting of 8 lines) within Delhi by 2021. Then, it is expected to carry 10.8 million people per day. It's going to be a great respite for commuters of Delhi, which adds about 600 cars a day.

Delhi Metro's success has ignited interest in other big cities too. Kolkata and Delhi apart, there are six cities where the population is more than three million and an MRTs is planned. Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Mumbai have approached Delhi Metro for preparing detailed project reports for metro systems. The work on Bangalore's proposed 36.5-kilometre metro rail network may begin anytime now (25 construction companies have been shortlisted), and is expected to be completed in five years. (Even countries like Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Bangladesh have approached DMRC for help.)

So, it's quite possible that in another 30 years or so, India's big cities start looking world class. Now, that's something.