Amaravati: A city back in India’s political arclights
This election placed the Constitution of India in the national spotlight, but what its results have brightened overnight is the prospect of Amaravati emerging as an entirely new city to serve as the capital of Andhra Pradesh (AP). A prime mover of this project, N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), has risen to political prominence.
Not only did Naidu’s party win power in AP, a state bifurcated a decade ago with Hyderabad to be hived off as part of Telangana, its 16 Lok Sabha seats constitute crucial support for the BJP-led coalition that’s set to take charge at the Centre. Reports suggest the TDP chief is looking for a big central package to dust off a plan that stayed mostly on paper for half a decade, the result of neglect by AP’s outgoing regime, which wanted Amaravati only as the state’s legislative seat, with Kurnool as its judicial HQ and Visakhapatnam its administrative capital. High real-estate stakes may have made tussles inevitable over what’s best built where, but this week’s power tilt has loaded the odds in favour of Amaravati as originally conceived.
While Naidu is the chief champion of this project, there is also a major opportunity in it for the BJP and Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. Infrastructure development has been a definitive thrust under Modi’s national leadership, but no planned-from-scratch city has arisen in recent memory on the scale of, say, Chandigarh, which arose under Nehru’s watch. Amaravati may well be a chance for both Modi and Naidu to literally consolidate an urban legacy.
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