AP CM Chandrababu Naidu building castles in the air: Reality Check Essential

Andhra Pradesh Chief minister Chandrababu Naidu is becoming notorious day by day with several project announcements. Being the chief minister of the state where ever he goes on tour he begins with several new projects of high scale which even government of India cannot complete in its 5 year term by undertaking Andhra Pradesh projects with total central government budget and sanctions.

Chandrababu is getting carried away by the euphoria generated during his trip and making announcements left and right without even the thought of what financial state the government is in now.

During his visit to Rajahmundry, he declared Rajahmundry as tourism capital of Andhra Pradesh and also smart city, he declared Kakinada as petro corridor and smart city while he was on tour to Kakinada. Visakhapatnam was any way declared as smart city post Hudhud cyclone. VGTM area was declared as smart city developed with the planning,assistance under Singapore and Japan. Babu & Venkaiah Naidu jodi declared Nellore as smart city during swarabharati trust celebrations. Mr.Naidu declared Tirupathi as devotional and spiritual smart city on his visit to temple town and declared Vijayawada as Aqua city.

We can hardly guess going forward how many smart cities will be declared but anyone can now understand that none of these are going to be a reality. While centre is not convinced surely about the way this government is working and henceforth withholding all promises of grants including special status to Andhra Pradesh. It is very unfortunate on the part of CM Naidu to tell people that centre has its own troubles to release special package of grants and also special status to Andhra Pradesh. Will he adopt the same stance if there is congress government in the centre? When things are not working in your favour, you have to fight and get things done. After all these promises are made in Parliament by both Congress as well as BJP leaders time and again. How can we forget the comment of Mr.Modi in Hyderabad declaring that while giving birth to Telangana, mother Andhra Pradesh was killed. Chandrababu Naidu should make all out efforts to take all opposition parties into confidence and move a delegation to Delhi demanding special status to Andhra Pradesh and also should put in efforts to see that 24 hour power supply to be given to the state even during the summer which now felt that certainly there will be power cut in Andhra Pradesh from the beginging of March 2015. How can he get industries without power in the state?

Many promises were made even after becoming the chief minister like NTR Food canteens in Tirupati, Rajahmundry and two other locations, solar parks setup. Ministers and officers of the government went to Tamilnadu and Gujarat for field study spending crores of public money for the above projects which are now lying in cold storage.

Mere building of sky scrappers cannot make Andhra Pradesh Singapore and Japan. There should be revenue generation and development of infrastructure for inflow of foreign investment, which needs effective administration of taxes and industrial and business policy design.

Similarly government should also encourage development of cottage industries and small scale industries. Bankers never extended a helping hand to these segments since independence. Banks demand 4 times more security from an entrepreneur who wants to start an industry or business while crores of money will be given to people of high ranks without even security. This we can see in many cases from Vadra to venkatramreddy(Deccan Chronicle), Mallya (UB) to Subrato Roy(SAHARA). People are asking for support not sympathy about their suicides from politicians.

If government can help extend support to profitable agriculture development from countries where agriculture is being flourishing such as Philippines, Isreal, Netherlands our farmers can make wonders with record output of food production and export. In the countries listed above good crop yield is being recorded inspite of difficult weather conditions. We have good soil, climate, talented farmers but there is no support for agriculture from governments. The next generation of farmers are not going to be a farmer in our country where as in many third world countries academicians are turning to agriculture (exception to farmers like KCR whose agriculture is highly profitable in Telangana).

It's high time to stop day dreaming start taking stock of our resources, capabilities and build around them a capital city which may not be as tall as Singapore buildings but with high index of happiness of people at their heart.

By Raghubhshan Eranki

PS: The opinions expressed in this article is those of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the organisation.