The global aspirations of one of India’s fastest-growing cities got a seal of approval Tuesday as Hyderabad greeted very prominent visitors, including White House adviser Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter, who along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi set the ball rolling at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017. It was hoped her inspiring presence would lend credence to the conference theme of “women first, prosperity for all”. While many Indian women have broken the glass ceiling, particularly in banking, that ironically is a global male bastion, it might need Ivanka’s charisma not only to trigger an investment flow into the country but also get half of India’s population to aspire to be independent as entrepreneurs, traders and professionals.
Hyderabad had an impressive makeover while preparing for the summit, and has got a gleaming new metro. This efficient mode of public transport, when it fully criss-crosses urban areas, will be a great boon. Having taken a pragmatic decision on the economic pricing of metro tickets, the twin cities can hope to derive advantage from a beneficial reduction of private vehicles on the roads, which can never cope with the rising number of cars and two-wheelers. Telangana has been extremely competitive in inducing businesses and industries to open shop and its capital could only have bettered its image with the first metro in the country to have opened on a grand scale, with the Miyapur-Nagole 30-km stretch and 24 stations in the largest such project worldwide in private-public partnership (PPP) mode. The city also put itself on the diplomatic map, with meetings that could further its ties with America and the 150 countries from which over 1,500 delegates have come to attend the business meet.
