In love with Hyderabad

Myopic planners cause of Telangana’s skewed development

Hyderabad was the bone of contention. Hyderabad is the cynosure. Critics often find fault with administrators for concentrating on the capital at the cost of other cities and towns. Critics of Amaravati often quote the example of Hyderabad. But, 50 years ago there was vision to develop urban Telangana in a holistic manner. But, the successive governments ignored it, leading to a skewed development in Telangana.

In 1965, VLS Prakasa Rao an eminent urban geographer based in Hyderabad in a study sponsored by the Planning Commission suggested alternative scenarios of urban growth in Telangana. A reading of this paper and juxtaposing it with the present day reality brings to fore the decades of neglect and shortsightedness on the part of the ruling establishment.

He advocated development of 27 towns and cities instead of the capital alone and a few large urban agglomerations. In an incisive analysis titled ‘Skewed Urban Development in Telangana’ published in Economic and Political Weekly, SP Shorey unravels the gap between the vision and reality.

Prakasa Rao recommended three sub-regional urban centres besides Hyderabad. They are Warangal, Nizamabad and Vijayapuri (Nagarjuna Sagar). He hoped Vijayapuri would become a boom town and estimated its population to touch 2.5 lakh. But today Vijayapuri is a just small town. As per 2011 Census, the population of Vijayapuri is only 15,000.

The population growth in Nizamabad town almost stagnated and Warangal registered below average growth. Vijayapuri town, which was considered an urban growth centre five decades ago, has actually recorded a steep decline in population growth rate. Besides, Prakasa Rao envisaged six regional wholesale market centres within 80 km radius of Hyderabad. These towns were Karimnagar, Kamareddy, Mahbubnagar, Bhongir, Khammam and Adilabad.

But, only Karimnagar and Mahabubnagar managed to surpass the average urban growth rate of population of united Andhra Pradesh during 2001-2011, analyses SP Shorey. Karimnagar grew consistently. However, the population growth rate of Adilabad declined sharply during 2001-2011.

Prakasa Rao envisaged 27 sub zonal regional retail markets centres. Only Siddipet and Suryapet recorded above average population growth . The towns that recorded below average growth rate include Zahirabad, Tandur, Bodhan, Jagtial, Nirmal, Kothagudem, Bellampalli, Peddapalli, Mahabubabad, Narayanpet, Wanaparthy, Gadwal, Kalvakurthy, Nalgonda and Devarkonda. Imagine the urban landscape of Telangana if all these towns also recorded higher growth rate.

In fact the population of Bellampalli like Vijayapuri has declined even in absolute terms. He proposed the development of Mahbubnagar and Kothagudem along with Hyderabad, Warangal and Vijayapuri as metropolitan centres. But, except Hyderabad and Warangal, the others are far from being metropolitan cities. He also proposed three sub metropolitan centres—Farooqnagar, Vikarabad and Bhongir. But, they were ignored by the planners and remained small towns.