R JagannathanFirstpost.com
The battle to retain Hyderabad having been conceded, the fight to locate a new capital is now entering its final stages in Andhra Pradesh. Even as a centre-appointed KS Sivaramakrishnan committee gets set to make its recommendations on the new capital on 26 August, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu made a pre-emptive strike by deciding to move many key Andhra government departments to Vijayawada.
A city of about one million (1.5 million if you take the agglomeration) located between two rivers, Krishna and Budameru, Vijayawada is at the centre of the rump state of Andhra. The Vijayawada-Guntur belt is the bastion of the Kamma community, the community to which Naidu belongs.
This has angered politicians in Rayalaseema, who had been lobbying for building the capital in Kurnool (on the south-western fringe of Andhra Pradesh near the Karnataka border). By choosing Vijayawada, or by trying to pre-empt the Sivaramakrishnan report in case it suggests some other city, Naidu may also be sending a strong message that the new state will lean towards coastal Andhra rather than the poorer regions of Rayalaseema.
Making his preferences clear the other day, Naidu said: “There should not be any doubt about Vijayawada. We should not locate a capital which does not have these basic features. We consciously developed Hyderabad and not Warangal and look at where Hyderabad is today.”
Actually, he is wrong to believe that states can have only one capital or administrative hub. There are several states which created temporary, alternate capitals – or at least alternate locations for their state assemblies. In Maharashtra, assembly sessions are held in Mumbai and Nagpur. In Jammu & Kashmir, assembly sessions are held in Srinagar and Jammu. So, a two-city, or even multi-city solution, need not be ruled out for Andhra Pradesh too.
If I were Naidu, I would ask Narendra Modi to help him set up three or four smart cities in Andhra Pradesh, where the government and administration can be distributed and yet connected by broadband and teleconferencing facilities. A government that uses digital files for its work could theoretically have its ministers and babus almost anywhere.
As India’s original cyber evangelist, Naidu should be thinking out of the box about the need for one single physical hub for his cash-strapped administration. If all his districts are cyber-linked and all interactions with business and ordinary people can be done over teleconference, administration would reach the people better.
As I have noted before, we need to examine why states need capital cities, and whether they need to be in one place at all.
First, capitals house the government and its ministers and MLAs. Cabinets tend to meet in capital cities. But they can meet elsewhere too. And if J&K and Maharashtra can have two locations for assemblies, clearly that is not a good enough reason for having a single capital.
Second, capital cities house armies of government officials – the implementation arm of government. From top policemen to bureaucrats to other administrative employees, capital cities are home to the top of the power structure. But does the entire structure need to stay in Vijayawada? Isn’t it cheaper to house government staff in various places?
Ministers may need houses and office rooms for cabinet meetings. That requires a building or two, not a designated capital city. Legislatures also need a building and a secretariat. That again needs a building. It helps if the legislature is situated next to ministerial offices, since ministers have to be in and out of the place often. But it is not essential. Keeping ministries away from legislatures will ensure that ministers actually take legislative discussions seriously. Now they can disappear and appear as they please.
Key government officers – the Director General of Police, the chairpersons of various state corporations, etc, - also need places to work from. But there is no need to think that everybody needs to be in the same place.
How would a private sector corporation, which has to choose between buying expensive real estate in one place and dispersing its officials all over make a decision? Barring a small headquarters office, it would let its senior managers work from where they are.
Next, for ease of communication, it would connect all offices with a video conferencing capability. Then it would ensure that critical staff work where they need to: sales and marketing would work close to customers, manufacturing and supply chain personnel close to suppliers, etc. Putting up everyone in one place has its downside too. Salespeople will be hobnobbing with top management for favours instead of serving customers.
Corporate boards that think about shareholders don’t work on the assumption that they need huge buildings and edifices to make a style and status statement.
So why should governments think they need just one mega capital city – with all the trappings of power – to be effective? Why should the agriculture minister not sit in one of the big farming districts (or even in drought-prone Rayalaseema)?
States need urban development to hitch their growth plans on to, but they don’t necessarily need capital cities. If the idea of smart cities is to catch on, states starting with a clean slate – like the new Andhra – should think differently on urbanisation.
New states ought to set new norms of behaviour and get closer to their people. Focusing on the capital city is a bad place to start thinking about your citizens.
Capital cities militate against the idea of bringing government closer to the people. In fact, we don’t need anything called a capital city. We need cities, we need capital, we need effective administration. We don’t need capital cities per se.
Maybe, Naidu should rethink Vijayawada as capital. He can have four different smart administrative capitals for half the price if he simply wires them all with broadband and is able to communicate with his ministers over cyberspace. Development would also spread more evenly across the state.
Naidu made Hyderabad into Cyberabad; he should create several new mini-Cyberpurams in Andhra Pradesh so that they collectively rival Hyderabad.
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