PHENOMENAL real estate prices in India's major cities have sparked a migration of both businesses and populations to smaller cities and satellite towns.
Over the last two decades, property prices in Bombay, New Delhi, Calcutta and Madras have risen so steeply that buying even a small flat in the far-flung suburbs has become well-nigh impossible for many local residents.
Even in smaller centres like Hyderabad and Bangalore, property rates boomed in the first half of the 1990s, as a rash of builders and property developers chased maximum profits.
An earlier trend which saw a steep population increase in the larger metropolitan centres has ground to a halt in the last few years with many of India's middle class preferring to move to smaller centres.
Many from Bombay moved to Pune, about 160 kms away. From Calcutta they resettled in the coastal town of Visakhapatnam. Madras citizens drifted to Coimbatore and Kochi (Cochin) and those from Delhi moved north to Ambala, Chandigarh and Jalandhar.
Even Bangalore, known as India's Garden City, is seeing such high pollution levels that many former residents now live in Mysore.
