Gujarat has a lot to look forward in the year 2022, with the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit in early January and the State Assembly elections in late December, despite Omicron. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled throughout Uttar Pradesh in preparation for the state’s upcoming assembly elections, celebrating the completion of projects such as the refurbished Kashi Vishwanath temple and the Kanpur Metro. Gujarat’s turn will come in the coming months, as the state government rushes to complete showpiece projects ahead of the elections.
The Vibrant Gujarat Summit is a major networking event, with the Who’s Who of global business in attendance. Every state organises such summits, but none has ever been able to beat Gujarat in terms of impact. Last year, the summit was cancelled on account of Covid, so this year’s event is much looked forward to. Gujarat has a new cabinet, led by a new Chief Minister and a host of new faces in the senior echelons of the bureaucracy.
Industrialists from all over the country and the world will come to shake hands with the new set, wrangling deals and signing MoUs.
Before the summit, the government has already announced some agreements, such as The Indian Hotel Company’s commitment to build a Taj hotel near the Statue of Unity and the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The area has become a tourist hotspot, and a five-star hotel is desperately needed. In terms of hotels, Ahmedabad can anticipate the opening of the ITC Narmada in 2022. It is located on Judges Bungalow Road and promises to be the city’s most opulent hotel. Another new development in Ahmedabad is the Palladium, the city’s first high street mall, which is being built by The Phoenix Mill of Mumbai in collaboration with local real estate developer Safal.
The anchor store here is expected to be Zara, which will make its debut in Ahmedabad along with a host of other upmarket retail brands. Narendra Modi may or may not attend the opening of the Palladium Mall, but he and Home Minister Amit Shah will most certainly come and ride the Ahmedabad and Surat Metros when they are commissioned in 2022.
Both the metros are expected to do wonders for their cities. The Ahmedabad Metro will connect Thaltej in the West to Vastral in the East of the city, running through 18 stations on both sides of the Sabarmati. Ahmedabad Railway Station in Kalupur, which falls on the route, will be a major beneficiary. The metro will reduce the old city-new city divide and bring the people of the Eastern and Western parts of the city psychologically closer.
The Dedicated Freight Corridor between Dadri in UP, near Delhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Navi Mumbai is another major infrastructure project to look forward to. The project’s Dadri-Vadodara section is expected to be completed in 2022. The Vadodara-Ankleshwar section of the Mumbai-Delhi expressway is also set to open in 2022. The world’s longest expressway, at 1380 kilometres, will reduce travel time between Mumbai and Delhi to just 15 hours. As a result, Vadodara, Ankleshwar, and other towns in south Gujarat will see significant growth.
The inauguration of a stylish pedestrian bridge over the Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad will add to the riverfront’s charm.
For the first time during the Vibrant Gujarat summit, helicopter rides will be available from the riverfront, and seaplane services between Ahmedabad and the Statue of Unity should resume in the coming year. The next phase of the Riverfront development will begin in 2022, while the High Court oversees the Sabarmati’s cleanup.
In terms of clean-ups, the Pirana landfill in Ahmedabad is scheduled for further rehabilitation in 2022. So far, about a quarter of the garbage in the 80-acre dump has been cleared, and plans are in the works to create a “oxygen garden” there. The toxic fumes from the dump will be reduced, if not eliminated, giving the Narol neighbourhood a new lease on life.
With Gujarat’s international headline-grabbing non-vegetarian vs vegetarian controversy now put at rest, cities like Ahmedabad can look forward to enjoying the best in global cuisine in 2022. Food delivery apps have aided the growth of some interesting new kitchens in the city, offering up everything from Japanese to Bengali-Mughlai dishes. Many of the gourmet kitchens are being set up by talented chefs who have moved to the city from Mumbai, where high rents, prolonged lockdowns and police harassment have made businesses unsustainable.
The International Kite Festival, which was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, is the first event that Gujarat can look forward to in 2022. The festival will begin on January 8 in Ahmedabad and will then spread to Surat, Kevadiya, Vadodara, Rajkot, and the Kutch. There may be fewer international delegates this year, but there will be plenty of khichdo and undhiyu. Let’s hope for a sunny 2022, despite Omicron!