Capital effect changes Velagapudi’s lifestyle

Velagapudi (Amaravati): This tiny village with a population of hardly 3,000 has become a hub of throbbing business activity since the interim secretariat becoming functional from October 3. The main road leading to Thulluru is dotted with a number of restaurants, a host of shops with building materials such as cement, iron and sanitary ware on sale, dairy units of leading brands and nationalised banks.

Hotel business is booming with hundreds of employees having shifted from Hyderabad and started working from last month and streams of people from different parts of the state visiting the new secretariat on different assignments.

Old buildings along the road converted into ‘homely’ messes catering to the floating populace. Vantage points are taken over by premium car showrooms.

The village is showing up signs of fast turning into a concrete jungle with several constructions coming up. With the growing demand for room, the property owners are making every effort to cash in on the increasing demand.

Around 3,000 workers, procured from Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal, have been engaged in secretariat construction which is going on at a brisk pace. These workers take off on Sundays when the markets put up sale of ready-made garments, groceries and knick-knacks.

The inhabitants of the adjacent Mandadam village seemingly feel envious of their neighbours for not having vacant sites to house hotels and business establishments as is the case in Velagapudi.

“All the hotels and restaurants came up in Velagapudi only as we have no adequate space along the main roads in our village,” Appa Rao, a Mandadam resident, told The Hans India with a sense of disappointment. In fact, temporary secretariat is more closer to Mandadam than Velagapudi in spite of the fact that it falls under the latter’s revenue village limits.

At least three corporate banks are reportedly making frantic efforts to start their new branches in the adjoining Mandadam. But the abnormal rentals are literally scaring them away.

According to the manager of a leading nationalised bank, the property owners are demanding a monthly rental of Rs 50,000 as a flat rate with the least regard for the guidelines of the banks which insist on payment of rentals per sft depending on the location of the property and the nature of the town/ city/ metro.

The rentals in the two villages have crossed the rates in metro cities, he added. The demand for lockers shot up in both the villages as the farmers benefited by ‘capital gains’ prefer to stash cash in lockers to keep it safe. “We have 50 lockers, each can accommodate Rs 1 crore.

All the lockers are filled with cash. We still have a bunch of 50 applications seeking lockers,” a branch manager of another nationalised bank in Mandadam said.

Boom in hotel business brings smiles for Kalyani, once a farm worker from Velagapudi. “I used to get Rs 125 to Rs 150 as wage when engaged in fields before the capital announcement. Now, I earn Rs 300 per day as a hotel worker in my village itself,” she said with a chuckle in her face.

Hoteliers from Guntur, Prakasam and Nellore districts came to Velagapudi to cash in on the capital effect. Restaurants with `Hyderabad biryani’ as highlight item on their menu is in great demand as the secretariat employees who were used to Hyderabad food habits till the other day love to relish the mouth-watering dish.

Sudden flow of cash as a result of shooting land prices has been causing drastic changes in the lifestyle in the two villages.

“Our people are going to Vijayawada and Guntur even for a cup of coffee and breakfast of late,” commented a resident at Velagapudi. Cars adorn almost every household and roads are getting widened.

Travel to Vijayawada and Guntur won’t take much time nowadays. A few farmers are investing the money in lands elsewhere, while some tend to lead lavish lifestyles by visiting clubs almost every day.