Neither journalists nor newspapers nor channels have the inclination or integrity to question whether the promised investments are real or not.
Published Dec 12, 2025 | 8:00 AM ⚊ Updated Dec 12, 2025 | 8:00 AM
The Telangana government recieved investment promises during the Telangana Rising Global Summit.
Synopsis: The Telangana government recently hosted the Telangana Rising conclave near Hyderabad. The summit saw huge promises of investments and job creation. However, on closer look, the promises appear hollow — much like several unfulfilled commitments made 25 years ago by the then state government.
A mouth that cannot afford even a grain likes to scent oil on the moustache. A sherwani on top, and pareshani (worries) underneath. The age-old wisdom handed down in proverbs seems to be realised in Telangana.
People of Telangana who read newspapers and watch news channels must have spent Tuesday and Wednesday (10 and 11 December) pinching themselves to check whether they were still in Telangana or had somehow landed in some imaginary celestial realm like Indra Loka.
All the poverty they see with their own eyes, the irregularities they experience every day, the unemployment, the hunger, the government that has no money even to pay basic bills have vanished; as if someone had chanted a charm and made all of it disappear, suddenly they were made to day-dream that not only the Krishna and Godavari but even the Musi was flowing with milk and honey.
It seems Telangana is “Rising.” In two days, giant industrialists from across the country and the world have descended and showered Telangana with investment proposals worth ₹5,39,495 crore, they said. Dozens of industrial and business groups apparently signed agreements to invest in Telangana during the two-day Global Summit held at “Future City” near Hyderabad.
Under the title Telangana Rising Vision Document, the state government launched what is essentially another old pickle like the lies of Vision 2020 — now again presented in three languages with ten so-called key strategies. The aim, they claim, is to transform the state into a three-trillion-dollar economy by 2047.
Which means, at today’s exchange rate, Telangana’s economy should grow into an economy worth ₹2,69,86,547 crore. (If the rupee depreciates further against the dollar, most likely, this figure will have to be even bigger!!) Currently, Telangana’s economy is around ₹18 lakh crore. So, in the upcoming 22 years, it will supposedly grow 15 times.
Even by the simplest arithmetic growth rate, this requires around 20 percent annual growth. Telangana’s Gross State Domestic Product growth has not crossed even 10 percent till now. No economy in the world has ever seen 20 percent sustained growth!
This document, titled Telangana Means Business, repeats the same old ritual of claiming to prioritise youth, women, and farmers. (On the very same day, newspapers also carried news of murders and suicides of youth, women, and farmers!) They announced that Telangana would be divided into three zones — CURE (Core Urban Region Economy), PURE (Peri-Urban Region Economy), and RARE (Rural and Agri Region Economy). Telangana, they said, would not compete with Indian states but directly with China and Japan!
In Hyderabad, they say, by 2047, electric buses will glide in and out of bus stops without any annoyance. Metro trains will wipe away the old images of maps in your mind. The area between the Outer Ring Road and the Regional Ring Road will be transformed into an industrial imagination.
Instead of the roar of factories, one would apparently hear melodious tunes. In the RARE zone, villages will freely display their identity. A drone will fly overhead writing the boundary of agricultural fields. A cold-storage unit will provide the background music. A farmer will be monitoring the prices of his produce on his dashboard.
I don’t know how many still remember the dreams that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s guru, Chandrababu Naidu, tried to sell as Vision 2020. Now, 25 years later, his disciple is trying to sell the same dreams with equal brazenness.
Let the dreams be. Let us look only at the numbers that were advertised in the Global Summit. For more than 25 years, I have been curious to see if even a single newspaper or channel, after a year or two or five, ever digs out these announcements and reports how many have actually materialised.
The vast majority of these announcements are not real investments. Neither journalists nor newspapers nor channels have the inclination or integrity to examine whether these are real investments or not.
These figures generally cannot be called investments. In economics and business terminology, they are called Expressions of Interest. Investors and businesspeople roam across the world looking for where they can get higher profits, greater market access, and easier access to raw materials.
As part of that search, they express interest in many markets. Local governments and market owners line up before them, promising endless favours. After comparing what they must invest and what they may gain, they finally decide where it is most profitable to settle.
After an Expression of Interest, lengthy negotiations follow. How much land will the government allot, what kind of electricity, water, and transport facilities will be provided, and how much tax exemption will be offered — on these and many other questions, the company keeps the officials on their toes.
They bargain endlessly, saying, “Another state is offering us more.” Regardless of these bargains, a company ultimately chooses a location based on raw material availability, human resources, facilities for employees transferred or newly recruited, local market potential for their products, transport facilities if the market is elsewhere, and many other considerations.
And in the middle of this, there will also be secret discussions about how much a bribe the decision-makers and political leadership must be paid.
Overall, in such mega summits, if 10 companies come forward, only two or three materialise. If they announce investments of ₹10,000 crore, only ₹1,000–2000 crore become real. And to impress the public, governments design schemes so that every company announce employment figures to the tune of 1,000 to 10,000 jobs.
Even if the company is eventually established, not even one-tenth of the announced jobs are realised. Even those few jobs do not go to locals. And even if everything goes smoothly and the company begins production, the government treasury gets no benefit because of the tax exemptions granted earlier.
Above all, public land belonging to the people is handed over in quantities far exceeding what the company needs, and that land becomes real estate. The electricity, water and transport facilities given to the company at free or concessional rates are provided from the tax money of the people. Or else, as is happening now, the name of a racist, fraudulent businessman like Donald Trump becomes a street name in Hyderabad.
In a truly people-oriented political and media environment, an investigation should be conducted after a year to verify the claims made in such mega summits. Does the company actually exist? When was it established? What products or services is it involved in? Does the announced investment have any relation to the company’s actual financial strength? Is there any real link between the claimed investment and job creation?
On such questions, many investigative stories could be written.
For example, the Global Summit mentioned an ethanol plant. Leaving aside the water and air pollution caused by ethanol industries, newspapers wrote that the company would invest ₹10,000 crore and create 35,000 jobs. A minimum online search shows that in the ethanol industry, with an investment of ₹10,000 crore, it is impossible to create more than 10,000–12,000 jobs.
Similarly, a company which had started with an investment of ₹10 lakh in July 2025 — just four months ago — is reportedly now establishing a biogas plant with an investment of ₹4,000 crore and 9,000 jobs. How many such gas companies and gas-based jobs exist?
If the ecstatic newspapers that are drowning in excitement about the “tsunami of investments,” “double the expected investments,” “two lakh sixty thousand jobs,” conduct even a minimal investigation, it will become clear how many of these tall claims are true and how many are falsehoods.
It was during the united Andhra Pradesh days that the then-chief minister Chandrababu Naidu introduced this method of giant statistical grandstanding in state politics and economy.
As part of running the state according to World Bank instructions, the strategy centred on endlessly repeating the unbelievable numbers and buzzwords cooked up by global consultancy firms and drowning innocent people in illusions.
From the Davos summit to the Hyderabad Global Summit, the pattern is the same. The Andhra Pradesh Economic Restructuring Project, written by the World Bank and the Vision 2020, written by McKinse,y were the early grandiose documents.
Less than 10 percent of the numbers projected in those documents ever came true. Those same tall claims were later carried forward by YS Rajasekhara Reddy, and after state bifurcation by K Chandrashekar Rao (more by KT Rama Rao).
Now it seems Revanth Reddy wants to move forward along the same path.
(Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
