Mohali: From a village to an edu-city with chaos on roads

Six kilometres. That is the distance from my house in Sector 66-A, Mohali, to Shahid Bhagat Singh International Airport. On a good day, it takes 15 to 20 minutes to reach there. But between 6 and 7 most evenings, it literally stops for over an hour, sometimes more, as traffic backs up along the lone approach road to the airport. This daily traffic jam is the clearest sign of how Mohali's promise of connectivity has been strained by its own growth. The alternative route remains a work in progress; the flyover meant to ease the crush is still a dream.

It is a curious irony for a city built quite close to Chandigarh, quite literally, on the promise of connectivity. I moved from pollution-dense Ludhiana to Chandigarh some 25 years ago. I later shifted to Mohali and watched the settlement, which few outside Punjab could once place on a map, to turn into the Tricity's most confident address.

Mohali began, in the government's own narrative, as an industrial estate carved out of village land in 1967. It took shape as a township only on November 1, 1975, when then Chief Minister Giani Zail Singh laid its foundation stone and gave it the name it still officially carries: Sahibzada Ajit Singh (SAS) Nagar.

For its first generation of citizens, SAS Nagar was Punjab's industrial address of pride. State government enterprises such as Punjab Communications Limited or PunCom (PCL), Punjab Wireless Systems Ltd (Punwire), Punjab Recorders and Punjab Cables, the last a venture built by former Chief Minister Harcharan Singh Brar's daughter, Babli Brar, shared factory space with private giants JCT, Philips and Ranbaxy. Late Chief Minister Partap Singh Kairon's family enterprise, Pratap Steels, once stood where Bestech Towers stand today. One by one, the mills gave way to costlier ground.

What replaced them was an education and knowledge economy that a village of mud lanes could scarcely have imagined. The National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) trains the country's pharmaceutical researchers here; Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) pursues fundamental science; National Agri-Food and Bio-manufacturing Institute (NABI) works on agri-biotechnology; Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) anchors software exports; a state government medical college trains doctors; and the Indian School of Business sends out graduates meant for boardrooms well beyond Punjab. Around these institutions has risen an altogether new skyline, IT City, Aerocity, shopping malls, corporate hospitals and the high-rises that now define this satellite city.

Only the road network has struggled to keep pace with the development, and that failure sits at the heart of Mohali's growth story. Airport Road, or PR-7, remains, by GMADA's own admission to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the sole route carrying traffic from both Punjab and Haryana to the airport. A parallel plan for six flyovers between Kharar and the airport crossing, meant to convert the stretch into a freeway, remains in its early phases.

Mohali built a university township, an IT city and, on paper, an aerotropolis before it finished building the road to its own airport. That gap is the central story: a village outgrew the ground beneath it faster than its roads could keep up with.

Dinesh Sood, Mohali

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