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Why Jagan Mohan Reddy is starry-eyed about Visakhapatnam? | India Today Insight

As part of his decentralised development plan, the Andhra Pradesh chief minister wants the city to be the seat of the state administration

Amarnath K. Menon 

Hyderabad

January 8, 2020

UPDATED: January 8, 2020 16:59 IST

 

 

 

 

 

 

File Photo: City and the coastline viewed from Kailasagiri Park, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. (Photo: Getty Images)

 

When Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy travelled to the port city of Visakhapatnam on December 28, he was greeted by a 24-km-long human chain that snaked its way from the airport to RK Beach, where he inaugurated the colourful Visakha Utsav. The tumultuous welcome-a thanksgiving-was hardly surprising, for earlier, on December 17, Reddy had made it clear that the future of the state was in decentralised development, proposing Visakhapatnam as the seat of the state administration. As the headquarters, it will also be the base of the state's governor while the legislature will function from Amaravati. The high court will be moved to Kurnool, once the capital when Andhra was separated from the erstwhile Madras state in 1956.

Distributing the seats of the executive, legislative and judicial functions across the state, Reddy believes, will spur equitable regional development. While there are no parallels for it in the country, his diehard supporters in the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress (YSRC) Party point out that it is inspired by the experiences of multiple capital cities. They cite South Africa as a case in point. Three cities serve as capitals of the country-Pretoria (executive), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloemfontein (judicial). Among Indian states, Maharashtra has two capitals-Mumbai and Nagpur, which holds the winter session of the state legislative assembly. Himachal Pradesh has capitals at Shimla and Dharamshala (winter).

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By veering to Visakhapatnam nearly 500 km east of Hyderabad, Reddy is poised to give it leverage in transforming the urban agglomeration on the Eastern Seaboard into a bustling metropolis. The city has the potential to evolve in size and stature, eclipsing the capitals of the relatively new states of Uttarakhand, Jharkand and Chhattisgarh and more recently Telangana. Moreover, at the moment, Andhra Pradesh is a tad better, topping the official Ease of Doing Business Index, relegating Telangana to the second spot.

 

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Visakhapatnam has plenty to offer. What was once a fisherman's village developed speedily post-Independence, with the commissioning of the port and the setting up of a host of state-owned entities, including Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, Hindustan Shipyard, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited that manages the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, Bharat Heavy Plates and Vessels Limited, and some private industry, besides the influential presence of the Indian Navy as the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command. The port is also the hub of the Shipbuilding Centre (SBC), the assembly line for the Arihant-class nuclear submarines. With over 100,000 having secure jobs in public sector companies and the Navy, Vizag is the only truly cosmopolitan city in the state. It is also vying with Surat to be among the richest 10 cities in the country, as a significant contributor to India's overall GDP.

After the bifurcation of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh in 2014, then chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu wooed information technology (IT) companies to set up shop in Visakhapatnam, like he did earlier in Hyderabad. "During Naidu's tenure, we had three investor summits, teaming up with the Confederation of Indian Industry, but the impressive commitments went waste as he asked potential investors later to invest in Amaravati instead of Visakhapatnam," says O. Naresh Kumar, director, Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry Federation. "Had Visakhapatnam, as the fourth populous city, been chosen the state capital in 2014, we would be giving the major metros a run for investors' money."

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However, it has been sluggish even though the state agencies took upon themselves to create leasing space for the IT industry. Consequently, more than 2.5 lakh sq. ft of floor space is available for housing offices in the IT Special Economic Zone and Rushikonda Hill No 3. Space is also available in the two Millennium Towers built at a cost of Rs 223 crore. In Madhurawada and the suburban areas, about 15,000 flats are available in apartment complexes, which can be used to accommodate officials and other government employees.

A large chunk of land is also available in the city, which can be used to set up the state secretariat and other offices. "Availability of vast tracts of open government land, about 15,000 acres, prompted the K.C. Sivaramakrishnan Committee to favour Visakhapatnam, before the former chief minister (Naidu) zeroed in on his dream city Amaravati," recalls an official in the city. These lands, he points out, are along National Highway 16 in Anandapuram, Kapuluppada, Pendurthy and the BRTS Road in the suburbs, about 20 km from the city centre.

 

Chief Minister Reddy may have, therefore, concluded rightly that Visakhapatnam is infrastructure-ready for a transformational change. The Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation has already resumed land allotted to some industries and these are now with the government and can be used for the secretariat and other offices. The government has cancelled the agreement with the UAE-based Lulu Group and about 13 acres is available on the Beach Road for any seafront facility.

"As a coastal city, Visakhapatnam and its suburbs have immense potential to trigger an economic boom," says D.S. Rao, chairman, Visakhapatnam Metropolitan Region Development Authority. It has an exclusive 'Health City', a 'Pharma City' and is already emerging as an incubation hub. "This is going to be the next great city in the country for industrial collaboration with the US," says Andhra industries, commerce and information technology minister Mekapati Goutham Reddy. "For this, our government is extending policy support to local entrepreneurs to be part of the sub-contracting system in the preference procurements happening between India and the US."

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Vaastu experts, too, give Visakhapatnam, the thumbs-up. "There will be speedy decision-making and rapid development. Moving the administration from south to the north will bring the state good fortune," says vaastu specialist Rejeti Gopa Appalacharyulu.

Evidently, the plan to capitalise on the city's ready infrastructure and other strengths are buoying the spirits of the relatively docile society of Visakhapatnam and the north coastal districts of the state. But there are challenges too. Pollution levels are alarmingly high, air connectivity is restricted by the navy, which controls the airfield, and barely 7 per cent of the revenue of the Waltair railway division is from passenger traffic. A whopping 93 per cent comes from cargo ferried from the hinterland, largely to the Visakhapatnam and private Gangavaram ports. Government employees are also against relocation by shifting the state Secretariat having moved from Hyderabad to Amaravati only a couple of years ago.

There are other fundamental issues, too, to be dealt with by the cash-strapped government. Reports of the six-member committee, headed by retired bureaucrat G. Nageswara Rao and the Boston Consulting Group, now being vetted by another high-powered committee of 10 ministers and six officials, before presenting their recommendations to the special session of the state legislative assembly, are not enough. The central government's support will be essential for Reddy to realise his decentralisation dream. That may not come anytime soon.