Will shifting capital endanger growth in Andhra Pradesh?

The Andhra Pradesh government seems to have set to pass Bills trifurcating its capital and repealing the Capital Region Development Authority. The past five weeks had seen intense protests by people of the Vijayawada-Guntur region, especially in the 29 panchayats that made up Amaravati.

The AP Assembly convened this week, against the backdrop of heavy police mobilisation in Vijayawada to control the very people the MLAs are supposed to represent. Under the draconian National Security Act, Collectors and Police Commissioners across the State were delegated powers to subject anyone to preventive detention for three months.

Indian farmers have frequently resisted land acquisition for urbanisation or industrialisation, Singur and Nandigram being two examples. Uniquely, the farmers of Amaravati are vehemently protesting the government's decision not to develop this region.

The dominance of Kammas concentrated in Krishna-Guntur districts is shown as proof to claim Amaravati benefits them alone. This is despite demographic and land-holding patterns in the 29 panchayats indicating that BCs, SCs, and minorities make up more than 75% of the population here.

Of the 29,000+ farmers who gave up land, a huge majority are marginal farmers - 20,490 had below an acre and 5,227 had between 1-2 acres. Records indicate that only 128 acres changed hands between June and September 2014, when government was formed and Amaravati was announced respectively.

Unproven allegations of insider trading were made, delegitimising this innovating land pooling scheme. Applying the same logic, questions can be raised about potential caste-inflected insider trading in Vizag now. YSRCP Parliamentary in-charge for this region is Vijaya Sai Reddy; Buggana Rajendranath Reddy heads the high-power committee appointed to study the GN Rao committee report and the BCG report on decentralising capitals; M Venugopal Reddy was appointed last month as Vizag Joint Collector, a post that gives him power over notifying and denotifying land here.

But without substantial proof of wrongdoing, this becomes a case of casteist insinuations and whisper campaigns against a social group or political party.

It is given that any land-owning caste will benefit when a new road is notified, an area is being urbanised, or when a new city is planned. Instead of communalising the discourse, we must debate based on election patterns and protests, the clearest indicator of people's will.

YSRCP won 29 out of the 33 seats in these districts, matching trends across Andhra. Nor was there anything about shifting capitals in YSRCP manifesto or its leaders' talks. Election and protests reflect democratic will that cannot be explained by simplistic binaries of caste mobilisation.

With investments fleeing and every contract being contested by the government, the State economy looks shaky. As recently as November 2019, it was ranked lowest among Indian States in terms of economic activity. This could well end up jeopardising the welfare programmes and, by extension, redistribution and social justice. The growth of Hyderabad as a services-led powerhouse in the 90s and 2000s had a significant impact on the State economy.

It sparked growth and alleviated poverty sharply in Andhra Pradesh. Poverty declined from 48% in 1993-94 to 11% in 2011-12, the biggest such drop among Indian states with population above 1 crore. Emulating this story, the way forward for the Andhra government is to create new avenues of growth, new sources of revenues, and increase the wealth to be redistributed to the marginalised.

Vizag is being made the de facto capital with the all-powerful CMO, the Secretariat, and heads of various administrative departments to be located here.

This reflects a different kind of centralisation and brings to Vizag a different kind of politics and incentives. Prominent groups as Adani and LuLu withdrew their planned investments in recent months. The logic of making the financially and technologically vibrant Vizag as the executive capital must be debated further.