Yes. It is a good idea.
There was answer on Quora by
Balaji Viswanathan
We need more cities
India needs to build 100s of new cities as people rapidly climb up the ladders of prosperity. Without the new cities, our exisiting cities would crumble in dirt and squalor. Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta were all quite beautiful a century ago and now they are urban mess.
Our once beautify national capital is trashed all over the world for its pollution -
time.com
The World's Most Polluted City Gets Even Worse - and for its safety. India deserves better. It is time, we remove part of Delhi's stress and build a city that will add honor to India. In Delhi, we have one crumbling city. IF we create a new one - we can have two sustainable cities - with Delhi getting back to her glory and the new city without adequate jobs.
Without new cities, people keep accumulating in existing cities, rapidly increasing land prices, making it unafforable for the common man and also making real estate a ripe ground for black money accumulation.
Governments should bootstrap the new cities
Every new city faces the predicament of attracting its first occupants. There are network effects involved. Would you migrate to an empty city? This is where governments could bootstrap new cities. If our central government and state government can move to new cities, we can have 30 new cities that will have sufficient population from the get go.
Governments are big employers and these new cities will have jobs from the get go. Governments also attract private companies who want to stay close to the babus [bureacrats] to get their job done. This produces a virtuous cycle and builds a sustainable city.
Also, when it is for them, the politicians and bureacrats build quite nice cities. Look at all the well planned cities that were developed just for being a new capital - New Delhi, Chandigarh and Bhuhabneswar. How many nice, non-capital cities have our governments built in the last 100 years?
Do we have the money?
People talk about all the expenses, without understanding that most of the expenses are infrastructural expenses in building new cities - precisely the kind of things we should be spending on now. And if the central government could even sell half of its property in Delhi at the prevailing land prices (above Rs.30, 000/sqft in central Delhi), it will have enough money to build multiple cities.
The price per acre in the heart of Delhi is Rs.100 crores ($15 mil)/acre. If the central government sells say 200 acres of its 1000s of acres of land in the capital, that Rs.20,000 crores would be enough to build one modern metropolis in central India, besides also reducing land rates to affordable levels in Delhi.
Where should it be?
I would ideally want it to be in the Madhya Pradesh - Chattisgarh border. With all the new economic activity, new jobs and new comforts, we might be able to reduce/eliminate the Maoist problem there. It will also be directly accessible to all the major cities, by being at the north-south, east-west nexus through which major highways are planned.
What about history and culture?
There is a myth that Delhi has always been the capital of India. It was a capital of India only since 1911. Until then, it was only a capital of regional rulers. New Delhi was built to weaken the Indian freedom movement that was getting active in the old capital of Calcutta. None of India's great emperors ruled from Delhi. Ashoka and many great ancient kings had Pataliputra. Vikramaditya ruled from Ujjain, Akbar from Agra, Sivaji from Raigad, Raja Raja Chola from Thanjavur, Krishna Deva Raya from Vijayanagara, Ranjit Singh from Lahore and so on.
Delhi is no more culturally significant than Patna or Ujjain or any of the great cities of India. And none of our iconic freedom protests led by Congress happened in Delhi. The nation as a whole is significant and no one city is above an another. The past 100 years is another era in our long history. No need to be too sentimental about it.
Has it happened before?
All the time. Let's not forget our current capital is a result of one such move from Calcutta. You can look at other countries that did -
List of purpose-built national capitals
At the state level, we built capital cities of Chandigarh (to replace Punjab's loss of Lahore), Bhubaneswar and Gandhi Nagar.
Summary of benefits
- A new, planned city with lakhs of new jobs. Higher economic growth for India.
- If the new city is in the blighted center of the country, it could accelerate the growth of the whole region. Chattisgarh and MP could enjoy some of the benefits Haryana and Punjab enjoy. Again, a safer, prosperous India.
- The new city, by being at the center would be more accessible to people all over the country.
- The planned new city could improve India's prestige, taking the heat off Delhi.
- Delhi would be less polluted and safer with the reduction in population following the exit of government. It can get back to its old glory.
- The reduction of land prices in Delhi would temper inflation and also burn a big chunk of black money.
- Middle class could afford to buy homes in Delhi and in the new city, thereby increasing the quality of their life.
The benefits are far bigger than the costs. Let's get moving. We need a new capital.
Islamabad is about 425 km from the Indian border too.
make Hyderabad .. capital of india !
.. PK hy kya..
https://www.google.co.in/maps/dir/3...74.8295319/@32.8343632,75.3260026,7.75z?hl=en
First lets improve the cities we have and do not worry about new cities. Delhi has that physiological impact of the past though. The ruler of Delhi was considered the de facto ruler of Indian sub-continent. It has its own importance. Not interested in money wasted for a new capital, which is a waste.
I prefer Delhi to be the capital. Again as someone said before, state capitals do most of the most. The work of Delhi is just co-ordinating and dealing with foreign embassies.
You are right there will be too much opposition to any idea of changing capital, we can't build anything near to it, today Delhi represents India we need to change Delhi not capital.