What exactly was Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy thinking when he wanted to turn one of his state capital’s greenest forest areas into an industrial hub by auctioning 400 acres — at Kancha Gachibowli?
I do not quite know but am sure the decision, now being reversed reportedly in favour of an “eco-park” — including land occupied by the University of Hyderabad in a 2,000-acre stretch — is a better one, though not necessarily the best.
Like marrying in haste repenting in leisure, the Congress party’s poster boy chief minister — famous for outspoken statements and quick-fix decisions — seems to be swinging from impulsive action to a knee-jerk reaction.
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Peacock and Hyderabad
However, a crackdown response from the Supreme Court and student protests against the planned auction — including disturbing videos showing an array of bulldozers with peacock cries in the background — suggest that it is politically savvy to turn a necessity into a virtue.
What is this thing about Hyderabad and peacocks in disturbing news? The last time I heard some bad news about the city and peacocks was when the now defunct and disgraced Satyam Computer Services Ltd’s founder B Ramalinga Raju confessed to staging India’s biggest corporate fraud after the company (ironically) won the globally prestigious Golden Peacock award for corporate governance in 2008, a year before the fraud was revealed.
Raju’s misappropriation of corporate funds included failed real estate deals that sent him to prison.
Peacocks are back in the news in Hyderabad this year for all the wrong reasons, much as we celebrate India’s national bird whose plight in the latest bulldozer episode has been far from glorious.
Interestingly, if Congress goes forward with the eco-park idea, it would be taking a leaf out of Opposition BRS Working President KT Rama Rao (KTR) who vowed to reclaim the controversial 400 acres of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) land and turn it into an ecological park if the BRS returns to power.
However, it is a smart thing, especially in politics, to steal a good idea from your rival.
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Politicians’ obsession with land
What is this obsession of politicians with selling parcels of land? As I tweeted on X against Revanth Reddy’s move, there were Congress supporters who chided me by saying his predecessor government, led by the BRS, was hand-in-glove with real estate giants. Telangana Congress chief B Mahesh Kumar Goud the BRS and the BJP supporters were behind the green protests by students.
It is easy in India to duck responsibility for political decisions by invoking conspiracy theories that divert attention from the core issue, which in this case was an ill-advised decision to seek industrialisation of an already crowded and industrialised metropolis that already has enviable places like HITEC City, not to speak of a welter of industries from pharmaceuticals to metals.
Real estate is a low-hanging fruit for politicians to use land regulations and rights to make a quick buck or win support. Without prejudice towards any one party, I find it is a pattern in a society where the political culture is mired in feudal values.
Ironically, Revanth Reddy belongs to the party of former prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, who were passionate about building planned cities and preserving the environment.
If Reddy garu is smart enough, he may want to house educational institutions, research bodies or think-tanks in the leafy patch that has landed him in a political controversy. Non-intrusive, low-demographic activities increasingly make more sense than buzzing industrial hubs.
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Thinking beyond Hyderabad
Telangana should think well beyond Hyderabad if urbanisation is the aim. The man who once used to rule Hyderabad, current Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, is busy building a new capital at Amaravati at an estimated cost of ₹65,000 crore, turning his displacement from Hyderabad into an opportunity after years in political wilderness following the defeat of his TDP.
The relatively smaller Warangal, close to forests and with a population of 12 lakh, already has an industrial base and a reputed engineering college.
Decongesting Hyderabad by expanding cities like Warangal seems more appropriate than industrialising green patches in a city already located on a rocky plateau. Towns along the Godavari river that runs through Telangana, such as Mancherial and the sleepy pilgrimage town of Bhadrachalam, may offer new alternatives for Hyderabad.
Revanth Reddy can rely on hundreds of Telangana-origin success stories overseas to recraft his image and make his state prosper without running bulldozers over the green lungs of his capital.
Adobe CEO and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are only the two most famous of the city’s overseas ambassadors. Investors and philanthropists can be relied on to make Telangana a futuristic state. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, however, are known as much for feudal lords as for technology wizards.
Blame it on the rivers that run through the zone that spawned a zamindar culture, excellently portrayed by Shyam Benegal in his classic movie, Nishant. It is this culture that makes land deals an easy or obvious option for semi-literate local politicians and goon realtors.
Do we need a land-grab culture in a state that has amazing research facilities?
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The need to build its own Amaravati
I recently moderated a session on Beyond Biryani, a book written by my friend and science journalist Dinesh C Sharma, about the rise of Hyderabad as a science and technology hub, which has happened thanks to a host of initiatives from erstwhile Nizams to modern-day rulers.
The Indian School of Business (ISB), the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, the National Geophysical Research Institute, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) are only among dozens of institutions in the city that can spawn future-oriented innovation and industries.
It makes more sense to use these as a base to build innovative industries across Telangana than to overload a city grappling with severe issues linked to water and congestion.
A media report citing official data said last year that Hyderabad added about 500 million square feet of residential areas between 2015 and 2021. Commercial areas grew by more than 150 million square feet between 2010 and 2019. About 20 of Hyderabad’s 185 notified water bodies have completely dried up, while others face bad conditions, say environmental experts.
Between 2023 and 2024, the city’s groundwater table was depleted by two to seven metres, a report said last year.
It is time to think anew so that Hyderabadis think green and do not sing the blues. Reddy garu needs to build his own Amaravati.
(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, The Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He posts on X as @madversity. Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
