Amravati to be among world's top 5 cities: Chandrababu

Greenfield capital city Amravati will figure among the top five in the world and be an international benchmark, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu said today.
"This time it is the greenfiled city and I want to build the best. I want to benchmark it internationally. I am working with all the recent cities. It must be one among the five top (cities) in the World," Naidu said in a panel discussion at India Economic Summit here today.
"Land is available. Now I have to bring the best education institutions, hospitals, hotels and financial institution (to the new city)," he said.

Recalling work done by him for developing Hyderabad, he said: "It took nine years. We spent all our energies and resources in Hyderabad..Because of Hyderabad Telangana is having surplus budget."
He further said that "capital bifurcation, it is very painful process. It is crisis...(but) this time to build a new capital is rare opportunity (for me)".
On land availability, he said, "We have 34,000 acres of land pooling (for the new city). All political parties as usual opposed (land acquisition). They want to create problem. They provoked farmers (but) wisdom prevail with farmer and ultimately not a single litigation against it (from farmers) except political litigation."

He also talked about sufficient water availability for the new city from Krishna and Godavari rivers, and many canals in the areas.

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant talked about the massive urbanisation set to happen in India which will have 700 million people living in cities by 2050.
He was of the view that India should urbanise in smart way so that the country can become a vibrant urbanised economy of the world.
He said India should not urbanise the way China did as they followed the American model which led the creation of polluting cities.