Nagpur is growing at a fast pace. It becomes obvious right from the airport. The airport is going through a major renovation and new construction phase. In the city also one sees signs of growth everywhere. City has expanded in every direction. One sees construction everywhere.
Nagpur has been able to maintain wider and well maintained roads now for quite some time. Clearly it feels like one of the better cities in India. Of course, the recent news articles about the growth of Nagpur as a top second tier city has definitely affected land prices here. I heard several anecdotal accounts of prices increasing several time — sometime becoming close to 5 times in the last 2-3 years. And it appears that this trend will continue. This is definitely resulting in cost of living going up very rapidly. One can not help wonder how long is this going to continue.
One can also see many shopping complexes. Though the size of the malls is not comparable to what I saw in Bangalore or Mumbai, the number seems to be growing very rapidly and the size and quality also seems to be improving.
One area has been disappointing to me. I feel that in terms of value for money, the hotels are not good. There are very few good hotels here and the one that are OK are quite expensive. For example the hotel where I commonly stay — the Centerpoint Hotel — is one of the best in city and for the price that I am paying here, I am sure I can get better room in second tier cities in USA or many other countries. I think this will change soon because new businesses will increase demand for better hotels and the competition may bring down the prices. But then one can not be sure because in Bangalore and Mumbai that has not happened. Hotels there have outrageous prices and have not grown to keep up with demands.
This is supposed to be winter but it is quite warm during the day. Today it was close to 90 Fahrenheit.