HOW NOT TO BUILD ANOTHER UGLY CITY ON SHINY PROMISES

Hopes for Bharat Future City, Hyderabad’s planned satellite, are dim if the same incompetent bureaucrats and rent-seekers build it. The govt should first improve the facilities in Hyderabad

- RATHIN ROY

TELANGANA Chief Minister Revanth Reddy recently commissioned Bharat Future City (BFC), next to present-day Hyderabad aimed to be a "net zero smart city" that will "mirror New York and Tokyo". This is a laudable mission. However, sceptics would say that the entire objective of developing new cities in India is to create opportunities for rent-seeking. Liveability is only a marketing concern.

This is certainly true of all metropolitan cities that have grown in India in recent times. Pollution, chaotic traffic, appalling sanitation and garbage control, distressed housing conditions, and general ugliness are hallmarks of contemporary Indian cities.

The main wealth generator in any city is real estate appreciation, marked by the regular conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural use, with the attendant corruption benefits to bureaucrats and politicians, and the largely unaccounted and untaxed capital gains from increase in land and property values, apart from infrastructure and liquor contracts. This is especially so in all peninsular cities where economic success has magnified this terribly unproductive accumulation. It is little wonder that Hyderabad's gold and jewellery shops, being vehicles to hold unaccountable and illgotten wealth, outnumber other modern establishments. Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kochi are not far behind.

But I do not think that the Telangana CM is impelled solely by rent-seeking motives. He has articulated a clear vision for a better sort of city. His interventions to protect Hyderabad's lakes reflect a genuine willingness to put political capital behind the cause of a better urban future. But I must strike some notes of caution which he must be mindful of and not get carried away, like many before him, by boastful future talk and an obsession with technical parameters.