Chandrababu Naidu is making a bet most Indian politicians would never make. He is betting that economic geography can be engineered. It cannot.

In 1995, Naidu looked at Hyderabad and saw the future in IT. He pursued Bill Gates. Microsoft came. Hyderabad became one of India’s great technology hubs.

Now, after Andhra Pradesh lost Hyderabad to Telangana, Naidu is attempting something even more audacious:

Build Amaravati from scratch. And make it like Silicon Valley. But there is only one Silicon Valley. And it grew on the foundation of Hollywood.

Look at the parallels.

🇸🇬 Singapore engineered a globally competitive city through infrastructure, institutions and long-term planning.

🇦🇪 Dubai used infrastructure, connectivity and capital to overcome geographic limitations.

🇨🇳 China built entire industrial clusters ahead of demand—and accepted enormous upfront risk.

Naidu is doing it at state level.

The opportunity is enormous. But so is the danger. A greenfield city can become a ghost city. Land values cannot create productivity. Buildings cannot create companies. And technology parks cannot manufacture talent.

The government has no business to be in business. And it is not their business to fund other people’s businesses. Their funding has to be restricted to areas that commercial capital will not address or cannot address. So social fund investments are welcome and so are investments in bottom of pyramid entrepreneurs like Tripura is doing with the Co cred fund. But deeptech. You must be joking.

The difference between Singapore and a failed new city is not the master plan. It is culture.

That is why Amaravati may be an interesting experiments. And even though I can bet a billion that it will fail – it is worth trying. Failure teaches more than success does.

Can a democratic Indian state build economic geography deliberately—at Singapore’s quality, Dubai’s speed and China’s scale? I don’t think so. Can it replicate Silicon Valley culture. No.

You can make buildings. You can hire Lord Norman Foster because he built the Apple headquarters. You can even sprinkle money to make up for the reducing rainfall. But what you cannot do is to replicate the culture of Silicon Valley or even Noida or Bangalore in a hurry. You can’t throw more men or money to get a baby out in nine weeks.

I have actually been a great admirer of Naidu. His estranged brother in law, late Naren Rajan of the PSG Group of Coimbatore was not just a great educationist but also one of the pioneers of the telecom revolution.

Amravati cannot become another Hyderabad just like India cannot become another China.

You need a new playbook. Silicon Glen tried to replicate Silicon Valley in Scotland. It was a GBP 25 billion disaster decades ago. This is another one.

But the good thing about not having money is that you can’t lose it.

Amravati needs a new playbook. Maybe a better one than Hyderabad. Still no harm trying. At least some startups will get funded.