Amaravati, May 30: It promised to be “an Indian city like no other” – a modern, leafy metropolis modelled on Singapore, where citizens would enjoy parks and rivers and breath air unrivalled in freshness.
But Andhra Pradesh’s capital Amaravati has been painfully slow to materialise and remains little more than dust and farms as its crusaders resort to crowdfunding to turn the pipe dream into reality. A staggering $15 billion is needed to transform Amaravati from a few shiny buildings, villages and thousands of acres of agricultural land into the envisioned capital of Andhra Pradesh.
Andhra Pradesh once had another capital – the booming tech and business powerhouse of Hyderabad, which pulses with IT know-how and a startup culture. But the revenue-rich city was assigned as the capital of Telangana, when it was carved out of Andhra in 2014.
The two states were to share Hyderabad until Andhra chose another city as its capital. But authorities decided instead to build a grand new seat of power some 275 kilometres (170 miles) away on the banks of the river Krishna.
While India has a tradition of planned cities, including Sir Edwin Lutyens’ New Delhi and Chandigarh in the north which was designed by Franco-Swiss modernist trailblazer Le Corbusier, nothing of this scale has been tackled for decades.
Amaravati was envisioned as a metropolis free of the chaos, traffic and air pollution. “It’ll be an Indian city like no other,” said Sreedhar Cherukuri, commissioner of Andhra’s Capital Regional Development Authority. Amaravati’s anticipated 3.5 million inhabitants would enjoy efficient public transport including a monorail and metro network, while trees would shroud half the city with a green zone akin to New York’s Central Park, the official said.
Consultants from Amsterdam provided advice about an extensive canal system and expert opinion was sought from Singapore and Japan, among others. “Everything has been planned to the last detail. We’ve taken the best ideas from around two dozen global cities but this perhaps comes closest to Singapore in its inspiration,” he said.
However, nearly three years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone, Amaravati is largely deserted. An island of modern office buildings in the middle of fields hosts Andhra’s chief minister and state government, which relocated there after Telangana claimed Hyderabad. Yet there is scant evidence of the promised utopia.
Half-finished settlements dot farmlands, most not connected by proper roads. Plans for the promised riverfront, housing and public transport have been marred by delays.
“We came here because it really has the plans and potential to become a global city,” said a university official at a huge but largely empty campus in the planned city. “The on-ground infrastructure development, particularly the roads, has been slow,” he said, asking not to be named.