'Hyd'bad Scares Of Danger Ahead For Business Credentials'

By Arhaan Faraaz | Hyderabad

The fight over whether Telangana should be carved out as a new state is in many a ways a fight over the IT hub of Hyderabad that has for decades been the headquarters of the campaign to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh. 

Hyderabad is geographically at the heart of Telangana; it's also the economic engine of the region. It has Microsoft's first and biggest office in India, Facebook's only set-up in India, and a slate of top business schools. The city pulls in 40% of the annual revenue earned by the existing state of Andhra Pradesh.
With so much at stake, its residents are waiting for more clarity on how its revenue and other resources will be shared if the Centre wins its battle to turn Telangana into India's 29th state. 

Historian Mohammed Safiullah says he fears that Hyderabad is not done with demonstrations and agitations, given the Centre's plans to make it a shared capital between the old and new state for the next decade. 

"Will tensions now increase?" the 47- year-old asked. "We need a solution and to me it seems like a lot of ambiguity is lurking around this proposed solution (of a shared capital) which may in turn lead to other problems."

If Telangana is granted statehood, the Andhra Pradesh state will comprise of Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema, or "Seemandhra."  Worried by the prospect of new limits on their share of power, water and revenue, the regions are demanding a "United Andhra."

They fear they will be treated as "outsiders" in Hyderabad, and jobs and colleges will be increasingly difficult to access.

But even those who are running businesses in Hyderabad are concerned about the future. They say Brand Hyderabad has been dented by the tug-of-war over its future.  

Numerous bandh calls in Hyderbad in the last few years supporting the Telangana state have meant that mega- projects including call centres were lost to other southern cities like Chennai and Bangalore. 

"In the BPO business, there are certain norms. The standard process is that within three rings, the phone and client needs to be answered. But if there is a bandh, there are only 120 agents instead of 150 at work. Then the queue is longer, so then obviously business was being impacted," says BV Mohan Reddy, CEO of Infotech Enterprises, a multi-national in Hyderabad.