Visakhapatnam

Visakhapatnam—Vizag to everyone who lives there—has the deepest natural harbour on India's eastern coast, and that depth has determined every chapter of its history. Buddhist monks built monasteries on the surrounding hills in the 3rd century BC. The harbour drew Dutch, French, and British traders by the 17th century. The East India Company established a factory here in 1682. But Vizag's modern identity was forged in 1907, when the British opened a shipbuilding yard, and in the 1950s–1960s, when India chose it for Hindustan Shipyard (the country's first public-sector shipbuilder), a steel plant (now Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited), and the Eastern Naval Command headquarters.

The naval base alone transforms the city's economics and security posture. India's nuclear submarines—the Arihant class—are based here. The Eastern Naval Command controls India's maritime operations across the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. Military and defence spending flows through the city at a scale that dwarfs most Indian metros of comparable size. Vizag is to India's eastern seaboard what San Diego is to America's Pacific coast.

The Visakhapatnam Steel Plant—India's first shore-based integrated steel plant—produces 7.3 million tonnes annually but has been mired in privatization debates. Pharma City, a planned 1,500-hectare pharmaceutical manufacturing zone, aims to make Vizag a competitor to Hyderabad in drug production. IT parks have attracted Wipro, TCS, and other firms. The city's population exceeds 2 million in the metropolitan area, making it Andhra Pradesh's largest city after the state lost Hyderabad to Telangana in 2014.

Cyclones are the geographic tax. The Bay of Bengal generates some of the world's most powerful tropical storms, and Vizag sits directly in their path. Cyclone Hudhud (2014) caused $11 billion in damage. The harbour that made the city also exposes it to the ocean's violence.