UK help may make Howrah ‘Sheffield of the East’

Font Size -

Express news service

Posted online: Friday , April 18, 2008 at 02:05:36
Updated: Friday , April 18, 2008 at 02:05:36

Kolkata, April 17 The much-needed revival of Howrah — Kolkata's twin city on the bank of the river Hooghly — could be a reality very soon. A major UK consultancy firm, Mott MacDonald, has identified three projects that could rejuvenate the decaying industrial city.

The consultancy, which was appointed by the state government and Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) for drawing out a roadmap for the city's revival, will submit its final report by the end of this year.

Michael Moulds, Mott MacDonald's team leader for urban and regional planning international, said: "We prepared a broad rejuvenation strategy for the entire area and have identified three catalytic projects for redevelopment of the areas."

These include projects involving sports and fitness, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals project, health, education and hospitality.

While the sports and fitness project will be located in south Howrah, the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals project will be located in the centre of the city.

The remaining project of education and hospitality will dominate north Howrah, with the area between Uluberia and Bally getting special focus.

"These three catalytic projects — along with the (Howrah) riverfront development plan — would play a major role in rejuvenating the 'Sheffield of the East'," Moulds said, in a reference to Howrah's past glory as an engineering hub.

A special purpose vehicle will be formed for the revival project. The firm is also offering advisory services for the restructuring of the sick public sector undertakings and tourism development project of the Damodar Valley Corporation.

Bookmark this Page

What is this?

Digg

On Digg, users share intersting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages. Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

del.icio.us

At its most basic level, del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Washington Nationals baseball team could tag those links with any terms they want, like "baseball," "nationals," "natsfan," etc.

As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us sers can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

Reddit

Reddit allows users to submit news articles and other online content to the site. Users also give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit then uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

Digg

My Yahoo

Fark

del.icio.us

Newsvine

Rate this Article

Rating

Post Comments

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*
Message*	Characters remaining

TERMS OF USE: The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.

I agree to the terms of use.