Hyderabad, the best in India! In what is yet another jewel in its crown, the ‘City of Pearls’ has emerged as the Number One city in India in offering the best quality of living standards in Mercer’s Quality of Living Report 2015. Ranked 138th globally by the Mercer report, Hyderabad beat Pune (145th) to the top spot in India and left India’s IT hub Bengaluru (146th), Chennai (151st), commercial capital Mumbai (152nd) and India’s political capital New Delhi (154th) behind in the quality of living sweepstakes. Vizag model emulated
While Hyderabad is the biggest city in Telangana, the port city of Visakhapatnam which was completely devastated in 2014’s Hudhud cyclone, is the biggest in Andhra. Vizag not only turned around in less than a year, but also won accolades for running one of the best municipalities in India and also a torch-bearer of the LED revolution sweeping Indian cities. The city after Hudhud decided to go in for more expensive LED ligting which in a year time helped the government recover the costs. This is being emulated by 100 cities across India. These are just two of the many examples of how breaking-up is sometimes better than staying together. Both regions have grown and the investment flows have been spectacular. Investments galore Hyderabad is now home to biggies like Uber, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft and mind you – all these giants have their biggest centres outside the USA in Hyderabad. So it isn’t like having an office or a small branch, but having huge centres of excellence and though the ball was set rolling earlier, the governments of the day have been catalysts of change by actively pursuing the same. AP too, hasn’t been behind. Known for his vision and tech-savvy approach, Chandrababu Naidu has also been trying his best and the results are here to see. A plethora of investments have been promised to the state at the Sunrise Summit. Higher capital expenditure... Both Telangana and Andhra need to be proactive as they are coping with the consequences of bifurcation. Here are the interesting points of comparison. Telangana started its budget with a positive opening balance. Its proportion of revenue receipts to total receipts (82 per cent) is higher than that of Andhra (76 per cent). Telangana’s capital expenditure spending, both in value and percentage terms is ahead of Andhra but in the subsequent year, Telangana surprisingly dropped down its percentage of capital expenditure spends. Remember, it is captial expenditure that brings about future revenue earnings. Seeking to generate revenue for the state, Andhra is focusing on ‘Sale of waste lands and redemption of land tax’ (Own Tax Revenue) while Telangana is focusing on ‘Sale of land and property’ (Own Non-tax Revenue) The proportion of plan to non-plan expenditure is very low in AP whereas in Telangana the gap between the proportion of plan and non-plan is narrower than that of AP. While Andhra has a revenue deficit, Telangana has a surplus, albeit a nominal one. The major challenge for both the states is to generate the funds needed to meet the various schemes announced by the respective governments along with the recurring expenditure. While nominal maintenance of revenue surplus situation may not finance capital expenditure on the economic or social activities, cap on fiscal deficit and debt stock, as per the Finance Commission, restrict the scope of state borrowings. Hence fiscal discipline is important and there is no place for profligacy. |