Opinion Capital concerns

The protracted debate over the location of Andhra Pradesh’s new capital has ended with the government choosing Vijayawada. The city was picked despite the concerns raised by the Sivaramakrishnan panel, set up to advise the government on the new capital, that land prices in the region would make it prohibitively expensive to locate the headquarters of the new state here. Its suggestion was to create three capital zones from where the state could be administered, and not to concentrate all the government infrastructure in one mega city.

The AP government seems to doubt the practicality of spreading out the capital, but it should not entirely reject the possibility of decentralising administration. Vijayawada could be the seat of government but the state’s administrative apparatus need not be concentrated in the city, which is already a large trade hub. Land in the fertile Krishna delta, where Vijayawada is situated, comes at a premium, and if the government is forced to acquire large tracts, it could drain the state’s finances. Having clusters of government offices across the state would help relieve the pressure on land and also satisfy regional aspirations for a share of government. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has already promised “decentralised development of the state with three mega cities and 12 smart cities”. He could transfer a part of the government to these cities as well. Information technology could help bridge distances and synchronise the functioning of departments.

Advertisement

The Indian experience with setting up state capitals has been a mixed one. Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar and Gandhinagar were planned and built as capital cities after the first wave of states reorganisation. The government was the body and soul of these cities while the trade and business hubs, like Cuttack and Ahmedabad, were left undisturbed. Elsewhere, cities of the Empire, like Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai, and capitals of princely states, among them Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram and Bhopal, slipped into the slot effortlessly. A third lot, like Dehradun and Ranchi, acquired the infrastructure over the years. AP could learn from the desi experience and explore global models and turn Vijayawada into a modern, energy-efficient city, not a chaotic and sprawling urban slum.