Amaravati’s second life formally began Friday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching projects worth ₹58,000 crore. Though envisaged in 2014 as Andhra Pradesh’s new capital after the bifurcation of the state, it became a victim of the bitter political rivalry between TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu and YSR Congress boss, YS Jaganmohan Reddy. Naidu, who won the first assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh after the bifurcation, had envisaged Amaravati not just as a modern, climate-resilient, renewable-energy-driven city but also as his legacy. The latter aspect, perhaps, explains why Reddy, after ousting Naidu from office in 2019, scrapped the capital city project and proposed a three-capital plan as an alternative: Visakhapatnam, Amaravati and Kurnool were to be developed as the executive, legislative and judicial capitals respectively. The Andhra Pradesh High Court struck down the idea, but the government continued the legal battle. The return of Naidu to office in 2024 led to a revival of the project, with the Centre and World Bank agreeing to fund it. Hopefully, Amaravati, once a thriving centre of Buddhist learning, will now rise along the Krishna, on schedule and without any more cost overruns.

Amaravati’s second life formally began Friday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching projects worth ₹58,000 crore. Though envisaged in 2014 as Andhra Pradesh’s new capital after the bifurcation of the state, it became a victim of the bitter political rivalry between TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu and YSR Congress boss, YS Jaganmohan Reddy. Naidu, who won the first assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh after the bifurcation, had envisaged Amaravati not just as a modern, climate-resilient, renewable-energy-driven city but also as his legacy. The latter aspect, perhaps, explains why Reddy, after ousting Naidu from office in 2019, scrapped the capital city project and proposed a three-capital plan as an alternative: Visakhapatnam, Amaravati and Kurnool were to be developed as the executive, legislative and judicial capitals respectively. The Andhra Pradesh High Court struck down the idea, but the government continued the legal battle. The return of Naidu to office in 2024 led to a revival of the project, with the Centre and World Bank agreeing to fund it. Hopefully, Amaravati, once a thriving centre of Buddhist learning, will now rise along the Krishna, on schedule and without any more cost overruns.

The building of Amaravati will be closely watched for multiple reasons. India’s old cities are bursting at their seams with continuing migration from rural areas. New urban centres will need to be built to accommodate the migrants even as existing cities are redeveloped. Can Amaravati provide a blueprint for this transition? The Amaravati model of land acquisition, wherein the government convinced close to 24,000 farmers to pool in at least 34,000 acres of fertile land to build the city, is in itself unique. The city has also been conceived as an urban space with a low carbon footprint. Post Independence, cities such as Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Dispur, and most recently, Naya Raipur, were planned and built as administrative capitals. Amaravati is meant to be an improvement on this model. How it turns out will impact not just Andhra Pradesh, but also the course of urbanisation in India.