A Summit where vision became vocabulary
Some mornings arrive with the feeling that a place is exhaling after holding its breath for too long. The opening of the Telangana Rising Summit 2025 felt just like that. It seemed as if a State is letting the future in, one careful (and determined) sentence at a time. At Bharat Future City, the air carried the sense of a beginning: not ceremonial, not decorative, but the beginning of a story Telangana clearly wants to write with its full spirit.
Governor Jishnu Dev Varma set the tone by formally opening the Summit and declaring Bharat Future City alive and ready. His words carried the composure of someone who has watched the State move from restless ambition to a steadier sense of direction. He spoke of a Telangana aligned with India’s larger ambition of Viksit Bharat, and credited the rise to transparent governance and citizens who are not just spectators but participants.
And with one sentence, he laid bare the scale of responsibility the Revanth Reddy government now holds: “Development is not magic; it is planning, hard work, and honesty.” In a world obsessed with shortcuts, the simplicity of that felt almost radical.
He highlighted something else too, the soft revolution led by women… Women driving electric buses, running renewable projects, restoring lakes, and building enterprises. Women not waiting for opportunity but insisting on it and creating it. It was the kind of detail that tells you a State is maturing in the right direction.
Envisioning growth for next decade
From there, the narrative shifted toward ambition. IT & Industries Minister D. Sridhar Babu spoke with the confidence of someone who has numbers in one hand and a master plan in the other.
Telangana’s 10.1% GSDP growth, its leadership across IT, vaccines, aerospace, and defence, all of it now setting the stage for a future shaped by AI cities, State data exchanges, skills universities, and hubs for life sciences and emerging content technologies.
He called Telangana the “launchpad for India’s next decade of growth”, giving a sense of direction to the Chief Minister’s vision.
Then came Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, who asked the room for something gentler: compassion. Compassion in economics, in politics, in how we see one another. He praised Telangana’s reforms including farm loan waivers, free travel for women, stronger healthcare and education, and reminded everyone that development without empathy is merely construction.
Of southern solidarity & national momentum
Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy and Karnataka Deputy CM D.K. Shivakumar added their own layers, one speaking of national momentum, the other of southern solidarity. Offering a rare combination of candour and camaraderie, Shivakumar said Hyderabad and Bengaluru are not rivals but partners in India’s long sprint toward the future. He reminded the audience that the southern States already power more than 30% of the nation’s GDP and will script much of what the country becomes next.
By the end, the summit didn’t feel like a series of speeches. It felt like a State standing before a mirror and finally liking the direction its reflection is facing.