Greater Noida West, or Noida Extension in popular parlance, is a case study in how a high potential property market suffers from years of systematic plight. Reason is more political apathy than administrative callousness, and the home buyers in this part of the world are waiting for basic services like Underpass, Metro Rail, Foot Over Bridge among others for around a decade now. A micro market with around a million (10 lakh) vote bank, taken together voters of high-rise apartments & adjoining villages, is part of Gautam Buddha Nagar Lok Sabha constituency. Ravi Sinha finds that the citizens in this part of the world have no one but themselves to blame for having allowed elected representatives to treat them as taken for granted voters.
The conventional wisdom of electoral politics suggests that more the number of voters in any given constituency and greater is the focus of the elected representatives to keep them happy as a vote bank. However, when it comes to the third world societies with questionable socio-political awareness & intelligence, where the votes are cast more on the emotive issues than the development report, this conventional wisdom goes for a toss.
Take the case of Greater Noida West where the ruling BJP at the Center and the State of Uttar Pradesh tend to believe that taken for granted voters are enough to sail them through. Hence, it pays to keep the development agenda back & forth without applying the execution button.
Greater Noida West has emerged as a key property market & citizen landscape of Delhi-NCR region in the last over a decade. Emerging out of a number of controversies & litigations, ranging right from land acquisition to project delays & defaults, lack of registry etc, the market is today home to a captive vote bank of around a million.
Sadly, this property market has only been fueling to the greed driven economy of the builder mafia, in connivance with the development authorities and the politicians. The residents’ protest across the various housing societies either goes unnoticed or ends in police intervention to treat the victim buyers as villains. The builder has the last laugh more often than not.
It won’t be an exaggeration to say that it is the cash cow, both in terms of revenue as well as the votes. But unlike other such heavily concentrated property markets, say for instance Whitefield of Bengaluru, this market is yet to witness the first wave of infrastructure roll out that could cope up with the basic needs of those inhabitants who have invested their hard-earned money, with a sizeable population paying through neck the bank EMIs for end number of years.
Greater Noida West has everything that could attract the fancy of the electoral politics. It has a large pool of voters, emerging affluent economy, larger tax base, vocal middle class that goes to polling booths, and last, but not the least, presence of media. It is also home to a number of media professionals in the region, thanks to the affordability curve. And yet, when it comes to development, the promises that made this market an investment magnet has not been turned into performance.
Just look at the development bottlenecks of Greater Noida West:
Revision after revision delays Metro Train for over a decade now
Lack of public transport in the area
Reported corrupt practices delays Foot Over Bridge
Underpass exists only on the planned map
Under deployment of traffic personnel leads to regular peak hour jams
Lack of police patrolling emboldens snatchers and local rowdies
Lakhs of ready housing units without buyers getting registry
Stray dog menace is a living reality here
Had this been in any other city with the predominant presence of vocal middle class, it would have reflected in their voting pattern. But the sitting Lok Sabha MP, Mahesh Sharma, continues to smile his way to the Parliament, without any acknowledged report card of development. This is enough to suggest he relies heavily on the taken for granted voters.
The big question on the eve of General Elections 2024 in May is whether the Greater Noida West will finally get its promised development, including but not limited to Metro Train. Well, more than the government and the administrative machinery, it is the captive vote bank of taken for granted voters who can answer it, if only they have a clear conscience to vote on the development agenda. Will the tangible development report card on ground translate into votes this time around? If not, this market will continue to vote like herds and in return will continue to get assurances and fake promises.
Ravi Sinha
#RaviTrack2Media
Ravi Sinha is a journalist with over two decades of cross-discipline media exposure. He is the CEO of real estate thinktank group Track2Realty. He has been writing extensively on the real estate sector for more than a decade now. Evaluation of real estate brand performance is his core domain expertise and he has immense insight into consumers’ psychograph. He has conceptualised Track2Realty BrandXReport as India’s 1st & only objective & non-paid brand rating journal that is industry-accepted benchmark of brand equity & ranking of the Indian real estate companies.
Track2Realty is an independent media group managed by a consortium of journalists. Starting as the first e-newspaper in the Indian real estate sector in 2011, the group has today evolved as a think-tank on the sector with specialized research reports and rating & ranking. We are editorially independent and free from commercial bias and/or influenced by investors or shareholders. Our editorial team has no clash of interest in practicing high quality journalism that is free, frank & fearless.
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