What Kancha Gachibowli makes visible

In the center of the controversy, more than 400 acres of land in Kancha Gachibowli there are multiple stakeholders: the Telangana government, the University of Hyderabad, the students, the environmental activists and the political parties. Each sees the earth differently, such as resource, sanctuary, active or symbol. File | Photo credit: PTI

TO The blind spot is a gap in our field of vision, a space that we cannot see. However, we rarely notice it. The brain instinctively fills white using signals from the other eye and the surrounding context. One eye compensates the other. But when it comes to how we manage urban land and design our cities, there is no such compensation. Sustainability is our present collective blind spot, rarely recognized and poured with short -term solutions.

The controversy of more than 400 acres of land in Kancha Gachibowli, Hyderabad, puts this blind spot in relief. In the center of the dispute there are multiple interested parties: the Télangana government, the University of Hyderabad, the students, the environmental activists and the political parties. Each sees the earth differently, such as resource, sanctuary, active or symbol.

That legal title falls to the State is indisputable. What is in dispute is everything else: what the earth represents, who is useful and what its future should be. For the State, the country’s auction is a pragmatic movement to generate income, employment and support the growth of Hyderabad. Those who oppose the auction are an act of ecological erase, a separation of community ties and a reflection of how development is carried out without a sustainable vision.

The land in question are not bars; It is ecologically rich. Approximately time, it has become a biodiversity access point, a carbon sink and acquired hydrological importance. Superca the formations of old rocks, seasonal water bodies and a variety of vulnerable flora and fauna. In a city where growing temperatures are a lived reality, the cooling function of such spaces is not only ecological, it is essential for urban habitability.

Despite decades of rhetoric around the ‘sustainable development’, urban land management continues to operate on a short -term horizon. Environmental evaluations are superficial, if performed at all. Communities are often neglected in the decision -making process. And the idea that some spaces have value precisely because they are intact, that preservation is a form of progress, remains oblivious to existing urban planning frames.

Legally, the Government is in firm land: the land belongs to the State, affirmed by the income records and the judicial pronouncement. But Law’s clarity on property does not equal the legitimacy in how that property is exercised. The applicable legal frameworks do not offer substantive guards for the ecological use of the land responsible for the government. The result is a legal vacuum where decisions that shape our cities are taken with little responsibility for sustainability.

This emptiness reflects a deeper inconsistency in urban politics. On paper, both the national urban policy framework and the master plans at the state level invoke sustainability, environmental administration and inclusive growth. In practice, thesis principles rarely survive the proof of commercial opportunity. The auction proposes Kancha Gachibowli is an example of textbook.

What makes this moment even more discordant is the answer to those who protest it. That the students are being silenced, only strongly, it is painful. This is a community promoted by gain, but by a shared sense of ecological responsibility. However, their dissent is trampled by the same institutions aimed at protecting them. That the excavators entered despite the protests and continue to clear vegetation stripes is a brutal reminder of how fragile our imagination of development has become.

In a city on Saturday with underutilized commercial real estate, this movement is not just myopic; It is thoughtless. It reflects a mentality that still treats the earth as basic, non -common products, and ignores the planetary crisis that develops around us. What Kancha Gachibowli does not stay in the legal authority, but a deeper period of vision, a kind of great disorder that refuses to recognize what is in sight. This blind spot is no longer passive; It has been institutionalized. The State, armed with the title and administrative machinery, is approaching the Earth with a transactional mentality instead of a rooted in the long -term administration. What is needed is not only legality, but the leadership formed by ecological forecast and a commitment to an inclusive and sustainable future for Hyderabad. Land is the optical nerve of our cities, and the 400 acres in Kachibowli show how deep our blind spot works. The question now is if we have the will and civic imagination, to see beyond.

Navya Jannu is a defender to practice in the Supreme Court of India