Over the past few weeks, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu was seen sporting a black badge. He was aggrieved and protesting against the central government's decision to not grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh. He ended the four year old alliance with the Narendra Modi-government and moved a no trust motion against it. On Tuesday, April 10th, he apparently set that unhappiness aside as also the black badge and was on stage in Vijayawada with spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev, popularly known as Sadhguru discussing what it takes to build a happy city. The dialogue between Naidu and the spiritual guru was to mark the takeoff of the three day 'Happy Cities Summit - Amaravati 2018' that the Andhra government was organizing to tap into ideas from leaders and experts on ways that could help built the state's new capital - Amaravati.

Naidu's focus in the dialogue with the spiritual guru was on how to build a happy city and the correlation between values and development. The spiritual guru said that for any human being to be happy there were two fundamental things that need to be attended to - chemistry and geometry. All human experiences, he said, "have a chemical basis to it and everything physical in the universe has a form and therefore the geometry of life becomes important." So when creating a happy city, it is important that the geometry of the spaces are supportive to the nature of the human being.

Aspects of these, he said, were incorporated in ancient cities which attended to geometry of the buildings and spaces supporting them, whereas today, the focus is largely on convenience and people don't feel fulfilled anymore just by surviving or by economic activity alone. What is therefore needed is to create a culture of engagement with all the elements.

On values and development and their correlation, the spiritual guru responded by saying that if only accumulations determine who we are then people would be oriented to develop behaviours where they will enjoy what they have and others don't and that is a kind of sickness.

Earlier, Naidu said Amaravati would be developed with more than 50% green cover apart from focus on other environmental issues such as greater reliance on solar energy, switching to electric vehicles and over 3000km of cycling path. Amaravati would come up as most liveable city, he said. In fact, at the event, the Indian Green Building Council also presented the Greenfield Capital Award to Naidu.

The spiritual guru Vasudev released the Amaravati Happy City Master plan at the event. Urging the delegates at the summit to share ideas on how to make Amaravati the happiest city, he called upon them to consider making Amaravati their second home. There were in all, over 80 international delegates present from 15 countries.

Later in the day while speaking to Business Today, Naidu said that perhaps it was time to get the badges out again referring to PM Narendra Modi's decision to observe a day long fast on April 12th to protest against the disruption of parliamentary proceedings. "Now we have to fight again as the Prime Minister has given a call for fasting. He has gone back on his own word. We are only asking what you have committed, you have to deliver," he said.