Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s decisions have been seen variously as bold, controversial and even reckless. His latest proposal to revisit the capital question trumps them all for its sheer audacity. If he follows through, it will be the most consequential of his tenure that will impact Andhra for generations to come. As things stand, he is more likely than not to reorganise the capital — making Visakhapatnam the executive capital, home to Secretariat and most other government departments; shifting the high court to Kurnool in Rayalaseema and retaining the legislature in Amaravati.
A special Assembly session is likely before this month-end to deliberate upon the reports of the G N Rao Committee and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Both have endorsed the CM’s proposal, which he made during the last hour of the winter session of the Assembly. Till then, there were whispers but none had expected as radical a plan as this. Even opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu appears to have been caught off-guard. Farmers, who surrendered lands for Amaravati in the belief that they would get commercially lucrative developed plots in the capital under the land pooling scheme, are out on the roads.
More than anyone else, they will be hit the hardest — losing multi-crop fertile lands (which even if returned may not be in a cultivable shape) and seeing their dreams of a better future come crashing down.
Naidu sold them a dream. Amaravati as he conceived costs Rs 1.09 lakh crore — spread over two phases in three decades. Its self-financing model looks fine on paper. The government will sell 5,000 acres at different stages to mobilise funds. In other words, each acre is expected to fetch Rs 20 crore. For this to happen, the government must first invest at least Rs 12,000 crore and raise loans. Given the time it takes to build, factoring in cost escalation, debt-servicing itself would strain the finances of the already revenue-deficit state.
The end result, too, is uncertain. Several experts and intellectuals, including former chief secretary I Y R Krishna Rao, former MP Undavalli Arun Kumar and K C Sivaramakrishnan, head of the expert panel formed by the Centre in 2014 to suggest alternatives for a capital, red-flagged Amaravati much before the G N Rao Committee and BCG. Sivaramakrishnan called it suicidal. Naidu listened to none. He formed his own panel comprising party leaders and businessmen whose report remains a mystery till date and announced Amaravati as capital complete with everything, including the high court, turning a blind eye to history.
In 1937, the then coastal and Rayalaseema leaders had held talks on the shape of an Andhra state. They arrived at what came to be known as the Sribagh Pact under which Rayalaseema would get the capital and the coastal region the high court or vice-versa. In 1953, when Andhra came into being, the state’s first CM Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu honoured the pact in the long-term interests of the state. After the Telangana experience and loss of Hyderabad, Naidu should have been acutely conscious of this history. After all, Telangana agitation had its genesis in the violation of the gentlemen’s agreement between Andhra and Telangana when they were merged in 1956. Naidu’s approach also gave rise to suspicions that Amaravati was a mega real estate venture.
No wonder, Jagan’s proposal hasn’t triggered protests anywhere except in the Amaravati villages. Those in favour of Jagan’s move question whether the state’s interests should be sacrificed for the sake of the protesting farmers since the latter’s demand mirrors Naidu’s idea. Similarly, the argument that Rs 9,000 crore has already been spent on Amaravati and it’s a Tughlaq act to stop it has no merit. You can’t sit back when a suicide attempt is being made since it’s already underway. Whatever is built could be put to use and all options must be debated, including whether Amaravati could be retained as an administrative capital without Naidu’s castles. An agreement like the Sribagh Pact must be arrived at. As they say, if we don’t learn from the past, we will be condemned to repeat it.
Kalyan Chakravarthy
Deputy Resident Editor, Andhra Pradesh
chakravarthy@newindianexpress.com