World

Modi calls for world-class city in southern India

Hundreds of thousands of locals and dignitaries attend elaborate ceremony to kick-start building of Amaravati

Afp October 22, 2015

In this handout photograph released by the Indian Press Information Bureau (PIB) on October 22 2015, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (2nd L) performs a pooja ritual at the foundation stone laying ceremony in Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh. PHOTO: AFP

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged authorities on Thursday to build a modern, tech-savvy city, as he laid the foundation stone for the new capital of a state in southern India.

Hundreds of thousands of locals and dignitaries attended the elaborate ceremony to kick-start the building of Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh, on former farmland on the banks of a river.

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The city is needed after Andhra Pradesh was last year carved in two, forming the new state of Telangana, after an emotional campaign by locals stretching almost six decades.

Hyderabad, an IT hub home to giants Google and Microsoft, will serve as the capital of both states for the next decade until Amaravati is completed.

Modi praised the state government for seeking outside help to design the city, after Singapore government agencies developed master plans.

"Very few new cities have been formed in India since after our independence, so, sadly this idea still isn't discussed as much," Modi said at the ceremony broadcast on national television.

"We should take urbanisation as an opportunity and not a challenge for us. I hope that Amaravati becomes the leader in all aspects of smart, modern cities across India," he said as the crowd chanted the city's name.

After coming to power in May 2014, Modi's government announced ambitious plans to develop 100 so-called "smart cities" in a country where rapid urbanisation has left infrastructure struggling to cope.

On Thursday, soil and water collected from holy rivers, temples and mosques throughout India and from other countries was scattered on the site as prayers and other rituals were performed.

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Campaigners argued for years that Telangana was needed because the Telugu-speaking region in Andhra Pradesh had long been neglected by successive state governments.

But other sections of Andhra Pradesh fiercely opposed the split, fearing it would trigger economic upheaval.

COMMENTS (6)

Dr. Saleem Siddiqi | 9 years ago | Reply India is playing on the front foot and doing all sort of evil atrocities with its neighbor Pakistan. Whether it is Cricket, International Border, our TV Commentators, Our Cultural and Social persons - all facing a direct brunt from India especially from Shev Sena. In other words India is saying shut up to Pakistan and Pakistanis but we are taking all these rubbish very easily as we have lost our respect. As a first step Pakistan should ban all Indian Movies which are telecasted here first day first show and minting Millions of our Foreign Exchange. As a second step, we should stop ALL trades from India which is already one sided as there are more import from India rather our meagre exports going there. These lesson should be sufficient India to open their eyes and establish a proper relations on equality basis

pakistani | 9 years ago | Reply @R Thomas: y comparing to india? y not our own land of pure? atleast they are trying what are we? still fighting with radicals

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R Thomas | 9 years ago | Reply Is India really doing all that well? Yes, the Indian economy maybe doing better than China % wise but that's only because the nation is 30 years behind China + in absolute numbers, India is way behind. Also, when 1 looks at things like Infrastructure, India is behind Kenya too and 1 example of that would be the frequent power cuts. Then, there are other issues too which 1 can see below or even under the LINK in the last paragraph which would show loads more. Also, India is only starting its manufacturing and so many firms are coming in. But would those foreign companies remain in India for a long time where people would get jobs and would the same happen with the local organisations? Nope as all of the foreign ones would have Automation and AI including Autonomous or Driverless vehicles. that is where things have headed and it has already started in US and Europe. India will take decades for it. So, all those jobs would go back (JUST LIKE IT HAS WITHIN THE BPO SECTOR which used to be India's strength though now it is facing loads of challenges as Indian firms have been late within the digital world - 10 years to be exact and in digital, if 1 is slow, that 1 is finished because tools and techniques used in the previous year itself becomes outdated in the following year. Things have headed towards automation and integration in the last 10 years but if 1 looks at many of India's websites, they all still stuck to the traditional ways- no integration and no real-time unlike what has happened abroad where digital systems have been integrated and automated in real time. In addition, as stated in the blog post below which shows statistics and ranking, India's eCommerce started 10 years late which is why it's not even in the top 30 eCommerce market in the world. In addition, India's Infrastructure is still 1 of the world's lousiest where even Kenya beats it. Kenya beats India even for research rankings in the world. Internet speed, India again has 1 of the world's lousiest, in fact, 2nd slowest amongst the Asian Pacific region. India still needs to get its basic of ELECTRICITY right due to frequent power cuts which is part of INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 2. India is only starting its Industrial Revolutions 1 to 3 on a big scale, about 200 years behind many of the nations and it has to catch up again with Industrial Revolution 4 that many nations have headed towards. Even though China was the world's 1st 1 that started the Industrial Revolution, it couldn't continue it due to change in empires then. China caught up and is now the world's best not just for MANUFACTURING, but also for ROBOTICS along with JAPAN. Japan leads the world in hospitality robotics where chefs, waiters and waitresses are all replaced by robots. China has it in the Manufacturing side. Besides, these 2 areas, they also have it in the health sector as well. Both of them are closely followed by the digital leaders of North America and Europe. DIGITAL IS NO MORE IN SEARCH and SOCIAL as IT'S GONE OVER TO THE NETWORKED ECONOMY. India is playing catch up in all these areas as IT IS WAY WAY BEHIND-few spots, it maybe ok but most way behind. India's non profit organisations as well as pharmaceutical sectors themselves don't have much of the digital world going on. Australia too is about 5 years or so behind Europe and North America. THAT NETWORKED ECONOMY IS HEADED FOR THE ROBOT REVOLUTION. And if you think AI doesn't exist on a superior level, think again. Heard of The Grid? It's AI for websites and not programmed by humans. Heard of financial exchanges that do AI (not programmed by humans)? Already exists today in many parts of the world. Heard of robots beating hedge fund personnel? Already happening today. Heard of MOOCs or Massive Online Open Courses? Largest ones exist from the west. That's just the 1st stage where the 6 basic types of blended learning went towards the online world. Heard of robot teachers? Already started happening. Heard of autonomous vehicles? Rio Tinto already uses them and in India, it is used by ENFIELD though don't think for autonomous driving but for manufacturing. In UK, it already is used as cabs. Volvo, Google, Uber, Mercedes Benz, Tesla, etc already are into it. Heard of Tesla? It's owned by the next Steve Jobs who was 1 of the founders of Paypal, which by the way is into the crowdfunding world. Crowdsourcing also exists and the largest 1 happens to be from Australia. The days of working from 9 to 5 have already reduced in many countries. Even Traditional Outsourcing has shifted to Crowdsourcing and it isn't from 1 country to another but within a country itself. Tesla, SolarCity, SpaceX are all owned by Elon Musk. Tesla is the world leader for electric cars and it's not just the cars that would make Elon rich but the batteries which by the way has challenged the $1 trillion electric grid sector of USA. Heard of robot doctors? They too exists. And it goes on and on within the robot world which already exists in many parts of the world and which can beat humans at doing tasks. ROBOTS - not programmed by humans can already do analytical stuff, creative stuff, labour stuff and more. 40% of the jobs that you see today won't exist in the next 10 years and that includes India-ENFIELD is only 1 of those Indian firms involved. 80% of the jobs that exist today won't exist in the next 20 or so years- The jobs that would go 1st are the repetitive ones or ones like analytical stuff like Accounting, etc as well as labour work which can be automated easily -The ones to go in the end are jobs related to relationship building or multiple tasks like nurses, some managers and executives, etc. Even some of the IT jobs would go before the multiple task ones as they can be automated. It's like your ATMs that already have replaced the financial and accounting side. Many parts of the world, cashiers have already been replaced by self service machines just like at the airports. Many nations also don't have bus conductors though they do have drivers as they have been replaced too by payment systems and so on. Networked economy-a lot more stuff has been happening in the western world as well as other Asian countries like Singapore, HK, etc; India has it a bit and is playing catch up). Do you think the growth is with smartphones? It isn't for now as it is with tablets. Apps world is nothing when it is all about Platforms that consists of not only apps developed on them but also 3rd party apps and platforms integrated to them. Do you think SAP and Oracle are still the ERP leaders? No they aren't. It's MS Dynamics as shown by G2Crowd. Cloud Computing shifted everything and 1 of the pioneers for it was Salesforce. CRM used to be connected to Sales but it has now gone to Marketing, Finance and Accounting, Project Management, Business Intelligence and Data Analysis, HR, etc. All those tools are now open source and open access where 1 thing is integrated to the other. Taking your music platform for example, Saavn, Gaana, etc are still apps while Spotify, Deezer, etc are platforms as they not only have apps developed on them but have also integrated to 3rd party music apps and podcast apps (Stitcher Radio is owned by 1 of them - find out if like). Salesforce is the world's best CRM tool that is also amongst the leaders for Marketing Automation. THINGS HAVE GONE TOWARDS AUTOMATION and INTEGRATION (where is INDIA-still way behind as THAT BLOG WOULD SHOW where FLIPKART and SNAPDEAL TOO are recruiting FOREIGNERS FOR THE JOB, NOT INDIANS WITHIN THE COUNTRY as THEY DON'T HAVE THE SKILLS). Marketing Automation is the next stage where the automation is at a higher level compared to the CRM world and the present leader for that is Hubspot even though Salesforce is a leader too. Hubspot is also a leader within the CRM world and in fact, Hubspot and Salesforce can be integrated. Heard of Internet of Things? Where is India? Still way behind. Even if you look at startupranking.com, most would be from US, not India. US also has more unicorns than India (Unicorn isn't about the mythology though it is connected to it). India is still way behind even for education. Not 1 university in the world within the top 150 which is why NOT just the rich Indians but also the middle class Indians head abroad - NOT just to US but also to Singapore, Australia, UK, etc as Singapore, HK, mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan have universities in the world top 150 (which helps kids too). Also, People would say India has made contributions a lot. Reality is it is nothing compared to China too including where China had 450 years of Golden Age compared to India's 200 years-can read all these points and more mentioned here under the BELOW LINK-statistics provided not just by world authorities but also by INDIAN ones-India is a leader for corruption (ranked 85th in the world), the leader in the world for pollution, AIDS since 1996, suicides, poverty and so on. It is 1 of the worst in the world when it comes to Infrastructure, Internet speed which includes the mobile broadband and so on. It also is way behind China when it comes to both Science and Innovations (Kuwait, Jordan and some of the African nations beats India for innovations and Innovations isn't same as Inventions, Discoveries and Creativity). India is also way behind when it comes to Education and Research also (Kenya beats India for research and Infrastructure too)(And don't group Non Residential Indians in same category for education and work experience INCLUDING leaders of top firms today as many have educational qualifications, professional certifications and work experience from abroad where people FOLLOW RULES too unlike India). India maybe ahead of China % wise but in absolute numbers, it is way behind; in fact India is about 3 decades behind China. Lastly, productsofgreatindia would show the blog post which has some of the statistics that India would need to improve on including the health, environment, safety, educational and other sides which are all given at the bottom of the site while top side of the site would provide India's flaws in Infrastructure, Internet and others too (poverty and low income statistics also provided).

N.S | 9 years ago | Reply Why the RSS, VHP hindutva people are seen at the stage, is it going to be a city for high caste Brahmins, or low caste Dalits will also be allowed.

LOL | 9 years ago | Reply Will Dalits be allowed ?

RT | 9 years ago | Reply This city will be the new silicon city of India.

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