Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Cyberabad and now Futurabad

While broad roads, familiar faces, and a leisurely pace defined life in the good old days, over time, Cyberabad rose with HITEC City and Gachibowli, turning the capital into a ‘tri-city’ of over 650 sq km under GHMC limits that boast of nearly one crore people. HMDA covers more than 7,000 sq km, encompasses the metropolitan region, including mandals, and villages surrounding the city

TelanganaChief Minister A Revanth Reddy on September 28th laid the foundation for ‘Bharat Future City’ at Meerkhanpet in Kandukur mandal, where ‘The Telangana Rising 2047- Global Summit’ is planned on December 8 and 9.

He conceptualized Future City as India's first net-zero urban space. It would be a global hub for business and innovation, integrating economic growth with ecological preservation, where people can live, work, learn, and play. Industrial parks, residential areas, specialized clusters for AI, and life sciences form part of Future City. ‘Bharat Future City’ will be a value addition to Hyderabad.

Having lived in the 434-year-old Hyderabad City for over six decades, I am awestruck and amazed at the scale of its development overtime, which has also added to its elegance.

The city has an award winning international standard airport, and many multinational IT companies are in Hyderabad. It is a globally known health hub and medical tourism center. Patients from Africa, Middle East and even the USA come here for treatment. Nevertheless, high rise glass towers, traffic ridden flyovers crisscrossing the city's skyline, gigantic malls, multiplexes dazzling with global luster, huge, structured hotels and hospitals, dazzling beauty parlours and bars emanate invisible, constant, unsettling radiation everywhere. Yet, ‘Hyderabad special evening showers’ that brought relief and fragrance to the soil, the gentle breezes that caressed, the compulsion to protect against cold weather in nights with thick bed sheets is just the past. People now experience unexpected heavy rains creating untold misery and havoc with floodwaters sweeping away even large vehicles in many areas. Painfully the inundated low-lying waterlogged areas, force commuters stranded in traffic jams for hours. Successive governments jealously competed in announcing ambitious flood-control and urban-improvement measures that never quite reached the ground. Each Chief Minister, armed with plans as tall as Hyderabad’s skyscrapers, found a way to rediscover the city’s ‘urgent need’ for drainage reforms, only during the monsoon, and then return to routine once the skies are clear.

The chorus grew louder after Telangana’s formation. Its first Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) promised in every monsoon, a ‘flood-free Hyderabad’ through the ‘Strategic Nala Development Program.’ Revanth Reddy echoed similar assurances, such as, permanently fixing the problem through ‘Study of Global Models,’ water harvesting wells, streamlining the storm and sewer system in flood-pronecolonies etc. Still, each cloudburst faithfully exposed the gap between promises and pavements, leaving Hyderabadis in perpetual astonishment. Yet, global summits are held.

The other side of Hyderabad development has more testing aspects. Streets echo into ugly consumerism instead of simplicity of life. An affordable provision stores, cart hotels, family run vegetable shops with seasonal produce, tailor or barber, shoe repairer, duplicate key maker are things of the past.’ Chain of huge retail outlets including fancy Rythu Bazaars are the order of the day.

This paradox dazzles, devastates, and forces a rethink on development. The shopping world revolves around grandeur malls, multiplexes in a single roof under which countless outlets of global and national brands operate.

Growth of hospital chains converted care into commerce. Packages, corporate tie-ups, insurance-linked billing etc. have become normal. Clinics, dispensaries, and nursing homes are disappearing. Pharmacist-run medical shops, once guiding the community for simple health needs, are non-existent. Chains often run without qualified pharmacists and offer unscientific discounts, and absolutely no check. Academic coaching centers for competitive examinations dot the city landscape. Residential house building activity has morphed into a colossus, with builders and developers calculating common areas almost equal to actual living spaces in a nonsensical way, with none to pre-examine. Only later, on the pretext of violations, demolitions became part of governance in their own way under different governments.

Communication networks know no bounds. Banking too is led by chains of public and private banks with uniform practices. Fuel stations, CNG outlets, and Electric cars’ charging centers, mark every stretch of the highway and the city corners. Liquor, once sold by a maximum of half-a-dozen small shops, now sees sprawling outlets.

The impulse to create businesses, the desire to multiply them and to meet a growing market across geographies transforms a lone establishment into business chains in Hyderabad that form part of a worldwide network.

While broad roads, familiar faces, and a leisurely pace defined life in the good old days, over time, Cyberabad rose with HITEC City and Gachibowli, turning the capital into a ‘tri-city’ of over 650 Sq km under GHMC limits that boast of nearly one crore people. HMDA covers more than 7000 sq km, encompasses the metropolitan region, including mandals, and villages surrounding the city. The latest idea is the merger of 27 urban local bodies into GHMC for coordinated metropolitan development.

Now it will be the ‘Future City’, including HYDRA limits, and a specific development Project envisioned as ultramodern and sustainable. This Visionary project reflects Telangana’s commitment to ‘Development with Difference.’

Hyderabad, once with small neighborhoods, now fulfils global aspirations. This development is indispensable despite visible excesses of malls, multiplexes, and towers. Hyderabad, once known for evening showers and quiet bazaars, is left with no option except to be reflective of India’s foremost global city, with the tri-city, Quli Qutb Shah’s Hyderabad, Sikander Jah’s Secunderabad, Chandrababu Naidu’s Cyberabad, and aspiring to transform into Revanth Reddy’s Futurabad, the Bharat Future City.

Meanwhile, the State Government has envisioned Hyderabad as the future leader in ‘quantum economy’ on the back of its strong infrastructure and digital skills.

The emerging Global City is envisioned as resilient, expansive, and inclusive, strengthened by public trust in the government’s commitment to pursue industrial-land regularization and transformation through HILT. At the same time, there is a strong call for a balanced and cautious approach in deciding the future of long-idle urban spaces: one that aligns with transparent, future-ready development, carefully weighing the merits and drawbacks, especially in the context of ongoing opposition and criticism.

Printed & Published by K. Hanumanta Rao on behalf of M/s Hyderabad Media House Pvt.Ltd and Printed at Aamoda Press, H.No. 5-9-287/10 & 11, Plot No. 53 & 54, Prashanth Towers, Rajeev Gandhi Nagar, Moosapet, Kukatpally(M), Kukatpally Municipality, Medchal-Malkajgiri District. and published from Hyderabad Media House Ltd, Plot No.1042, Road No. 52, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad-500033, TELANGANA.Chief Editor:P Madhusudhan Reddy. RNI No: TELENG/2011/38858