Tulluru, a small village on the Vijayawada-Amaravati road in Guntur district, roughly 25-30 km from both Vijayawada and Guntur, is the cynosure of all eyes. It is poised to become the heart of a city, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, Amaravati, to be built on the banks of the Krishna. Even the name - Tulluru - may become a thing of the past, once the capital is built or it may be retained in some form or the other.

It is the mandal headquarters and almost all the villages in the mandal - more than 20 - will be affected by the new capital project, but the majority of the farmers have reconciled to the fact and surrendered their lands.

The government has succeeded in pooling 32,000 acres for the capital and only some riverfront villages are resisting. It remains to be seen how the government acquires the remaining 5 per cent of lands for the capital project. Slow progress

The construction activity is set to begin next month and the first phase is expected to be completed by 2019. In the past, things used to move at a very slow pace at Tulluru – it took more than four years to build the bus station at the village. The land was donated by two families of the village - Puvvada and Mandapati - and the foundation stone was laid in 1977 by the then Transport Minister, Ch Hanumaiah, and the bus station was inaugurated four years later in 1981 by the then Transport Minister, K Rosaiah, the present Governor of Tamil Nadu. Obviously, now, things have to move at a much faster pace. Hyderabad remains the joint capital only for a decade.

Rents have been going up ever since the announcement of the capital.

Agriculture, the casualty Agriculture has become the casualty in the capital construction project, as three crops are grown in some of the riverfront villages known locally as jareeb lands. Even in the other lands, two crops are grown and it is a multi-cropping zone - banana, lemon, chilli, cotton, paddy maize, and others. The farmers are given Rs 30,000 and Rs 50,000 per annum per acre for ten years by the Government and then one-fourth of the land they have sacrificed is given to them, after development. Most of the farmers have settled for it. Land rates are in the range of ₹1.5 crore to ₹2 crore and above per acre.

Some of the farmers have expressed the opinion that “the Government offer is fair enough, as agriculture has become unsustainable and unremunerative, and there is assured return for ten years”. But others are unsure of what lies in store for them - capital gains or capital losses. There is bound to be an upheaval in the area during the next ten to fifteen years.

Related Topics