A capital controversy: Will Amaravati remain a utopian dream?
Amaravati, a new city in southern India that was to be developed from scratch, was going to be the brand-new showpiece capital of the truncated Andhra Pradesh state from 2024.
Currently, Hyderabad is the common capital for both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. For the city planned on the banks of the Krishna river in Guntur district, the state government acquired vast tracts of land from over 30,000 farmers across the state and invited foreign governments like Singapore and Malaysia to participate in its development.
The former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and Telugu Desam chief Chandrababu Naidu started the development of the new capital city and named it Amaravati.
It was to be a rebirth of sorts for Amaravati, an ancient city which, historically, was the capital of Satavahanas, the first great Andhra kings who ruled from 230-220 BC, after the downfall of the Mauryan empire. But creating a new capital city from inception has its own challenges, including political ones.
The project had a relatively smooth beginning, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi laying the foundation stone. However, the project soon hit a roadblock, with YSR Congress chief and now Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy levelling serious allegations, describing land acquisition for the new capital as a “big scam.”
He cut funds for the construction of the new capital and is yet to come out with a clear stand on the fate of the multi-billion dollar project.
As the project continues to court controversy and opposition from different quarters, its implementation appears to have reached a stalemate, with Reddy losing no time in seeking to blunt Amaravati’s prospects as part of his strategy to checkmate his opponent Naidu’s apparent calculations of political mileage from the project.
The rivalry between the two strong leaders, from the influential Reddy and Kamma communities, seems to have undermined the putative economic benefits of the project.
Observers say Reddy’s attempts to downsize the project are based on two assumptions.
One is political: Reddy wants to cut the Kamma community (Naidu’s vote bank) to size and expand the hold of the Reddy community. The second is administrative, but this is also understood to have a strong
political undertone. Reddy feels that a decentralised administrative set-up, as recommended by the KS Sivaramakrishnan committee in 2014, will lead to a more equitable development of the state.
While this unfortunate political power play has created speculation about the fate of the Amaravati project, there is a feeling that such political games should be kept away from public developments, particularly of this magnitude.
Naidu must have relied on his experience as the architect of the famed “Cyberabad”, the Hi-Tech city he built in Hyderabad, with a dedicated business corridor for technology companies, to plan and pursue his “passion” for Amaravati.
However, his “Cyberabad” success does not seem to have helped him push the Amaravati project in a similar, untrammelled manner.
Naidu’s project planning had an impressive complement of infrastructure development in both basic and social sectors.
The Amaravati project seems the story of a development with the potential to unleash an economic bonanza benefiting the new AP state in general and the Amaravati Region (Guntur) in particular.
The project faced early setbacks when his campaign for ‘special status’ from the BJP-led NDA government ended and, with it, the hope that it could partly shore up the financial needs of the Amaravati project.
This saw the beginning of his political
The project had a relatively smooth beginning, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi laying the foundation stone. However, the project soon hit a roadblock, with YSR Congress chief and now Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy levelling serious allegations, describing land acquisition for the new capital as a “big scam.” He cut funds for the construction of the new capital and is yet to come out with a clear stand on the fate of the multi-billion dollar project
devaluation, with the World Bank withdrawing its funding commitment of USD300 million after the central government withdrew its request to the WB for the loan.
Subsequently, the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank dropped its plan to lend USD300 million, thus stalling the new capital project.
Then, after May, came the new chief minister’s diktat, ordering stoppage of the work.
Reddy set up a five-member committee, comprising urban planning experts, to review developmental plans initiated by the previous government and suggest a comprehensive strategy for the all-round development of the state, including the upcoming capital Amaravati. The committee is supposed to submit its report in six weeks.
This is being seen as a precursor to a fresh development plan for Andhra Pradesh or a plan to recast Naidu’s project in a more pragmatic manner, in terms of costs and other parameters.
If massive investments were expected from global companies in different fields of industrial and developmental infrastructure, with marquee names, it should go to the credit of the planners of Amaravati Capital Region. And, of course, it could have a tremendous transformational potential for this predominantly agrarian economy. It could raise the state’s hopes for mitigating the huge unemployment problem.
According to a recent Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) report, 25% of the graduates and postgraduates are unemployed in the state, almost double the national average.
Amaravati may indeed hold the key to many a solution that the coastal state might be seeking.
However, was it fair to raise hopes with such an ambitious project like the Amaravati?
The question assumes importance with Amaravati’s script laden with speculation about its practicability for implementation.
On the other hand, the silence of the Andhra Pradesh chief minister, adding to the vexatious question about the fate of the project, is equally intriguing.