Quark City Under Cloud

According to the Chandigarh Tribune, Quark City, the US$500 mil­lion indus­tri­al and res­i­den­tial com­plex under con­struc­tion in Mohali, Punjab Province, India by Denver-based Quark, Inc. own­er Fred Ebrahimi is in jeop­ardy of being shut down… Or is it?

Preceding the open­ing of Dell’s third India-based cus­tomer con­tact cen­ter today, locat­ed in the Quark IT sec­tion of Quark City, both the Punjab Pollution Control Board and Mohali fire depart­ment issued warn­ings that Quark City did not have the required clear­ance to con­tin­ue con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion. However, the two fire sta­tion Chiefs who refused to give Quark City a per­mit were imme­di­ate­ly removed from their posts. The first, B.S. Sandhu, was trans­ferred; Lakhvinder Singh, the sec­ond, was suspended.

Government offi­cials main­tain that, because Quark City will be not just an indus­tri­al com­plex but a res­i­den­tial and enter­tain­ment cen­ter as well, its prox­im­i­ty to fac­to­ries that han­dle haz­ardous chem­i­cals (one is a paint man­u­fac­tur­er) rep­re­sents a health haz­ard to denizens of the pri­vate­ly owned city.