Chandrababu Naidu kick-starts growth engine, despite hiccups

Special Category Status continues to be a thorny issue

Chandrababu Naidu who earned fame for placing Hyderabad on the IT map of the world when he was the Chief Minister in the undivided State is once again making all-out efforts to see that AP also becomes an IT hub

The differences between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments and the hostility that was witnessed in the beginning of the year subsided with passage of time and both States are now gearing up better cooperation in the New Year.

AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his bête noire and TS Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao have buried their hatchet and revived their ‘friendship.’ The foundation stone-laying ceremony for the AP’s new capital city – Amaravati – had come as a ‘blessing in disguise’ for the two CMs to sink their ‘ideological and political’ differences.

The personal invitation extended to Naidu from KCR and his family in Vijayawada for the Ayutha Maha Chandi Yagam boosted the morale of the two CMs who once fought for their upper hand on Telangana political battlefield. So much so that Naidu has decided to give a broad policy outline in running the TTDP and leave the rest to the State leaders to avoid any kind of confrontation with the Chief Minister.

Soon after the cash-for-vote issue surfaced, Naidu in a strategic move decided to shift governance to Vijayawada and now has decided to vacate the Secretariat by June. Ever since, he focused his attention on Amaravati and other developmental activities. The government also unveiled the draft master plan for Amaravati capital region. Naidu who earned the name for placing Hyderabad on the IT map of the world when he was the Chief Minister in the undivided State is once again making all-out efforts to see that AP also becomes an IT hub.

So far, the IT department has got nearly 60 Letters of Intents (LI) expressing their willingness to establish their units in the State. Most of the investors are choosing Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, and a few others have opted for Anantapur and Kakinada. Another milestone for AP in 2015 in IT sector was the MoU signed with Microsoft.

Under the MoU, Microsoft will offer technology that will help accelerate sustainable double-digit growth and better public services in Andhra Pradesh. Microsoft India will support building of up to three proof-of-concept (POC) solutions to apply Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and Advanced Visualisation in the fields of education, agriculture and eCitizen services.

These POC solutions will be built and deployed to address specific problems within each of the fields to achieve better outcomes for the State. Continuing its commitment to support the government’s initiatives for cloud adoption and improve citizen services, Microsoft India will also provide training to the State Government’s executives on Microsoft technologies such as Cloud, Mobility and appropriate Microsoft Technology stack.

The company will organise an exclusive workshop to the government’s key administrative officers in improving productivity by using Microsoft technologies. However, certain decisions like Pattiseema project which the government claims is meant for interlinking of rivers and failure to get Special Status category for the State had led to severe criticism from the opposition parties like the YSRCP and the APCC.

The frequent clash between the ruling party and the YSRCP had even affected the functioning of the state Assembly and most of the time was lost in acrimony. The decision of the Assembly to suspend YSRCP member R K Roja for one year had also become a subject of controversy.

By V Ramu Sarma