YSR Congress party spokesman and former minister Ambati Rambabu is often criticised for talking through his hat just for the sake of publicity.
More often than not, his criticism against the Telugu Desam Party-led coalition government headed by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu lacks depth and substance.
But Ambati’s comments the other day attacking Naidu for deceiving the farmers of Amaravati in the name of building a world class capital city triggered a debate in the political circles, as there is some substance in his argument.
Ambati raised a pertinent question: “Does the state really need a world-class capital city, bigger than the national capital of New Delhi or a financial capital of Mumbai? Why should Andhra Pradesh have a world-class capital in the first place?”
Well, these questions definitely need proper answers. Yes, Andhra Pradesh doesn’t have a capital city of its own till now and for good or bad, Naidu has chosen to develop Amaravati as the capital region.
The people have not bought the argument of former chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s fancy thought of having three capitals for Andhra Pradesh; and voted in favour of a single capital city at Amaravati.
So far so good. During his earlier stint, Naidu has acquired 34,000 acres from farmers of Amaravati under land pooling system and with another 16,000 acres of government land, there was a total land availability of nearly 50,000 acres.
This itself is a huge land parcel and Naidu can build a beautiful, well-planned and ultramodern capital city within this available land, as per the master plan designed by Singapore consortium.
“Instead of having fancy thought of comparing with New York or Manhattan or for that matter Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, Naidu can utilise the resources judicially and build a wonderful capital city that can be compared to Hyderabad or even Bengaluru. Since it is a greenfield capital city, it can even be better than Chandigarh,” an analyst argued.
The problem comes when Naidu wants to acquire more and more land on the pretext of developing Amaravati as the world class capital city and threatens the people that it would remain a municipality if more land is not given.
As Ambati rightly pointed out who has asked for such a world class capital city.
“All that people wanted was a capital city for Andhra Pradesh and a liveable and well-planned city. There is no need to compare it with Manhattan or New York. We are not affluent like Americans and cannot afford to have such rich cities,” the analyst argued.
In any case, the government’s responsibility is to build the capital city, which will expand on its own as the population grows.
“It is foolish to compare the land value at Kokapet in Hyderabad with Amaravati. In Kokapet, the government land is available and it developed on its own; the Telangana government has not acquired land from farmers to develop it,” he argued.
