“I have a circle of people in Vijayawada,” he said, periodically reaching into his jeans pocket to quiet his ringing cellphone, “and I keep getting offers.”

He recently oversaw the sale of an acre of farmland belonging to his brother-in-law and said the deal brought in nearly $180,000 from a Vijayawada buyer he would describe only as a businessman.

“If you’re farming on it,” he said, “you won’t even earn 50,000 rupees,” or around $800.

The documents he drew up to register the sale show a price that is much lower, he acknowledged. He has arranged eight deals in recent months, he said, some to buyers who have told him to help them flip the land for a higher price. Many say that the beneficiaries of the speculation are not likely to be the farmers, who sell for relatively low prices. Nor will the government benefit, since it misses out on crucial tax revenue by turning a blind eye to off-the-book sales and illegal construction of housing and apartments on land zoned for agriculture.

For years, emotions dominated the debate over whether to split Andhra Pradesh. It was a battle of haves and have-nots that drove activists from the poorer Telangana region to set themselves on fire, politicians to fast for days and poets to write verses in favor of a separate state. Politicians from the relatively prosperous coastal area of Andhra Pradesh opposed the split — in anticipation, some have suggested, of the loss of hefty revenues from Hyderabad — and literally came to blows in Parliament in February with those backing the bill for the split.

For Andhra Pradesh, which will need an influx of industry after losing Hyderabad, the Vijayawada-Guntur corridor represents an imperfect opportunity.

“I know for a fact that politicians are buying land there,” said Anant Maringanti, the director of Hyderabad Urban Lab, an urban research program. “They’ll build real estate or high-value apartments. I don’t know if that’s really going to jump-start the economy.”