– Priyanka Edupuganti (Hyderabad)

Telangana’s congress government, headed by first-term Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy which completed one year in office in December 2024, is betting big on education.

On September 19, Reddy announced Bharat Future City (BFC) in Rangareddy district, 35 km from Hyderabad. The foundation-stone for the city’s administrative complex and key infrastructure was laid nine days later on September 28, in a high-profile ceremony attended by senior officials, global investors, and education leaders.

Spread across 30,000 acres, BFC is envisaged as India’s first pollution-free education-centric smart city, integrating education, research, innovation and entrepreneurship. The project, to be developed over the next decade, will comprise dedicated zones for higher education, health sciences, artificial intelligence, climate innovation, and digital manufacturing. With a projected investment of Rs.1.8 lakh crore under a public-private partnership model, BFC is scheduled to be completed by 2028.

At the BFC launch event, Reddy declared that the rising city will be “a knowledge capital for new India, where education and innovation drive every aspect of development,” adding that the government intends to make Telangana “a global classroom for technology, research, and sustainability.”

Under the city’s blueprint, a Global Education and Research District will host international university campuses, national universities, skill academies, and think tanks, all focused on next-generation learning. The proposed zone will also include residential schools, teacher training centres, and incubation labs connected by a unified digital grid. According to the Telangana Department of Education and Skill Development, discussions have been initiated with top ranked universities in Finland, Singapore, and the UK, as also with IIIT-Hyderabad, ISB, and NALSAR to establish satellite campuses within the city.

But not everybody is persuaded. The Rs.1.8 lakh crore project, according to some economists will impose a heavy burden on the already deeply indebted state’s finances. “Building a knowledge city is a great idea. But this huge amount mobilised by way of debt, would be better spent on upgrading existing schools, universities, and building teacher capacity across Telangana. Moreover this project will widen the rural-urban education gap,” warns Dr. Prabhakar Reddy, professor of education at Osmania University.

Supporters of the initiative argue that the education-focused BFC is an extension of the new state government’s commendable focus on education. Since assuming office a year ago the state government’s budgetary outlay for education has increased by 4.3 percent to Rs.23,108 crore in Budget 2025-26 with larger allocations for school infrastructure, digital classrooms, and teacher training under the government’s Mana Ooru-Mana Badi programme. Moreover, initiatives like TASK (Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge) and T-Hub 2.0 have positioned Hyderabad as a centre for education innovation.

It’s also noteworthy that the record of post-independence governments at the Centre and in the states for establishing new cities has been poor. As a result, India’s metros and large cities are over-crowded, heavily polluted, overrun with vehicular traffic and on brink of collapse. Against this backdrop, the new Congress government and Chief Minister Reddy’s Kg-Ph D focused BFC initiative serves a two-fold socially beneficial purpose.

“Our greatest infrastructure is not glass and concrete but intellect and imagination. Bharat Future City is our promise to invest in both,” said Reddy in his BFC foundation laying speech.

No right-thinking citizen is likely to take exception to this aspiration.