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On the evening of December 6, hectic activity was on at a sprawling hundred acre site within what is touted to be the ‘Bharat Future City’ near Meerkhanpet, about a two hour drive from Hyderabad. Scores of workers were busy giving final touches to makeshift structures put up for the Telangana Rising Global Summit 2025, a much-touted event organised by the Telangana government on December 8 and 9.
The event is expected to attract about 2,000 delegates from 44 countries. What is the much publicised summit all about?
In Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy's words, the event is meant to be a platform on the lines of the annual World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, to attract investments by showing the growth potential of Hyderabad. The aim is to make Telangana a three trillion economy by 2047, he has said.
In what is a first of its kind summit taking place in Telangana, industry bigwigs will sign memoranda of agreements (MoUs) with the state government to set up their businesses in the Future City.
The Future City is planned to be developed as a mega urban project by the Revanth Reddy government. It is set to come up near Hyderabad over an area of 765 square kilometres spanning 56 villages between the Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar highways, and is being built by the Future City Development Authority (FCDA).
The projects coming up in Future City include a ‘world-class film city’ to be developed by Bollywood actor Ajay Devgn.
Reliance Foundation’s controversial wildlife conservation initiative Vantara has reportedly proposed an animal rescue and rehabilitation centre, a wildlife conservatory and a night safari.
A Rs 3,000 crore project involving the construction of elite hotels is also said to be on the wish list of another major company.
The summit will be closely followed by an exhibition match involving CM Revanth Reddy and the legendary Argentine footballer Lionel Messi, at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium at Uppal on December 13. Hyderabad was not in the original itinerary of Messi’s GOAT India tour. But, the Telangana government clinched his presence after the Kochi stop of the tour was cancelled for logistical reasons.
The government believed Messi's presence will boost Telangana's global visibility and help Hyderabad position itself as a sporting, cultural and economic hub. It is planning to request Messi to serve as a global ambassador for Telangana Rising 2047 initiative to showcase the state worldwide through sports, tourism, investment outreach and youth programmes.
CM Revanth has also requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to allot some sporting events to Hyderabad if India wins the bid to host the 2036 Olympics. The government is also setting up a sports university in Telangana and inviting major investments in sports infrastructure.
It has also commissioned a detailed project report on Musi river rejuvenation to ‘beautify’ the river bank on the lines of Hangang river in South Korea as a model for attracting private firms to invest.
All these measures show that the global summit is not a standalone promotional event, but positioned as part of a larger strategy to make Hyderabad a world class city and achieve the government's goal as a three trillion economy.
All roads leading to Meerkhanpet have been given a facelift and recarpeted. Hoardings with the slogan 'Telangana Rising' have come up all over.
About 25 government departments are involved in the conduct of the event. A dry run will be conducted on December 7, and the venue will be fully ready in all aspects by December 8 afternoon, according to K Shashanka who is the first Commissioner of Future City Development Authority.
He said the summit will have 27 sessions of deliberations by delegates on various subjects of collaboration with the government.
The Chief Minister will unveil the Telangana Rising Vision 2047 document as the summit concludes. Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said that the vision document was prepared with the guidance and suggestions of NITI Aayog and Indian School of Business (ISB) - Hyderabad.
The venue has eight huge halls spread over 14,000 square meters. They include the main hall where the inaugural and valedictory programmes will be held with a seating capacity of 2,000. An annexe to the main hall has rooms which will be used by the Chief Minister for one-on-one interactions with delegates.
Breakout session halls, a media lounge, dining halls, site offices, police camp and a reception centre are spread out around the accommodation where the proceedings will take place. A huge hall which will house an expo for private firms and government departments to exhibit their products was also being spruced up.
An underground internet connectivity with 5G data and uninterrupted 10 Gbps WiFi service has been established to cater to up to 10,000 users at a time. A network operations centre has been opened by the T-Fiber centre of the government to monitor round-the-clock internet services.
Private players like Airtel and Jio have also set up their own towers for smooth functioning of their operations.
LED screens to beam the proceedings have sprung up all over the 100-acre site and the road leading to the venue from the Hyderabad-Srisailam highway.
Apart from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom the Chief Minister personally met to extend the invitation to the Summit, all Ministers of Revanth Reddy's Cabinet were sent to various states to invite the respective Chief Ministers.
The summit will be inaugurated by Telangana Governor Jishnu Dev Varma at 1.30 pm on December 8.
Though the construction of Future City as the fulcrum of Hyderabad's growth was in the mind of Revanth Reddy since he assumed office, it was only recently that the government initiated steps to give shape to the idea. Revanth Reddy has visualised all areas falling within the Outer Ring Road (ORR) as the core urban area of Telangana.
It was in this background that the government recently issued an ordinance to merge twenty municipalities and seven municipal corporations with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). This has expanded the limits of GHMC from 600 square kilometers to nearly 2,500 square kilometers, and the number of municipal divisions from 150 to about 300.
The government also brought in a controversial Hyderabad Industrial Land Transformation (HILT) policy to shift industries within ORR to locations outside with the aim of ‘modernising’ Hyderabad. It proposes to generate revenue of about Rs 5,000 crore by converting the vacated spaces for commercial and residential use.
Under the policy, construction of apartments, integrated townships, office spaces, retail centres, hotels, schools, hospitals, research centres, parks, sports facilities and cultural centres can be taken up to align with the State's Growth in Dispersion (GRID) policy.
