Q: Why more than one capital?
Under the guise of pragmatism(convenience, economics etc.,), admnistrative infrastructure tends to be in one palatial place, and this leads to all the important decision makers living in the capital. Businesses, social organizations including the political parties tend to have their own liason, or better still, head offices in the political power centre, the capital city. This ultimately dilutes the noble intention of decentralized development. At best the decentralized development would come to mean development of a few more cities. The development has come to mean locating at least one or two industrial/knowledge hubs around the few cities. It does not take us even an inch towards making villages self sufficient and economically independent, a prerequisite for poltical freedom.
An honest move towards decentrallized development begins with a few fundamental moves, one of them is to build a new capital city in each sub region of the state, amidst the most backward and problematic cluster of villages, remote from any big city
(The others:
a) to build clusters of new campuses of elite institutions of higher education and research in clusters of remote rural villages and
b) building the infrastructure that includes the needed service facilites, for all the new campuses or for the govenrnance, only on the lands leased from the villagers. - More in another blog post, 'Three Primary Steps towards Sustainable Good Governance' )
1. The problem of locating capital for what is left of Andra Pradesh, can potentially seed further divisionary tendencies in future. If there is just one oppositon party and if it happens to have a strong base in a few regions, the tactic of stroking the divisionary thoughts seems to offer a short /smart cut to gain political mileage.
2. The one painful lesson learnt from the past seems to be that the major investments should be distributed over different regions instead of just in and around the new capital. But this is easier said than done because of a strong tendency of collusion between the vested interests of politics and businesses.
The question arises: "Can the action of our leaders really over come the compulsions of the specific dogmas of the large scale production systems of the day that stem from things like 'scale of operation', 'the bigger the better' etc., ?"
3. The above question assumes importance due to the needed pragmatism in addressing the 'large upfront investments on infrastructcture needs of the desired distributed mega production clusters' in all the regions. The available modest manpower and economic resources would be a convenient excuse for meeting/wetting the vested interests of the powerful quarters in conentrating the investments just in and around the new capital city.
4. The only pragmatic solution, and the one that can stand up to the major short comings of the current practices, including the sense of alienation of societies far away from the capital, is to have three capitals, one for each region.
If the capital in a region can be located, instead of close to the bigeest city of the region, in a cluster of the most remote underdeveloped villages of the region, it would be even better.
5. This calls for a new strategy to organise our legislative assembly proceedings equitably in all the three capitals. It would be worthwhile spending time and resources in finding amicable temporary working solution pending the final one.
One thing is clear: the state of the art Information and Communication Technology can be and should be utilized in the palnning and evolution of the plans to make all the peoples of the subregions feel that they are all equal partners in the democratic processes, decision making and not feel alienated. or neglected.
