Economic wellbeing is way forward, says KTR

Hyderabad: Telangana's Minister for Industries, Commerce and Information Technology, K.T. Rama Rao, on Thursday called on politicians to pay attention to economics rather than on politics.

Addressing the NHRDN (National Human Resource Development Network) 'Decoding the Economic Future: Hyderabad as Catalyst for 5T economy', the minister said that it is unfortunate that leaders in India are focusing more on politics and neglected the economic aspects. "India is in a perennial mode of elections, and politicians were always more focused on winning the elections than creating wealth for the next generations. We are the world's largest democracy, and elections happen throughout the year, and the leaders are always preoccupied with politics.

Underlining the importance of the equitable distribution of wealth, he said that India is the most populous country in the world, and yet a majority of the wealth of the nation is owned by a few individuals. It is the primary responsibility of every single government to ensure wealth distribution. "We need to think whether the leadership of our nation is giving us the aspirations of being a 25 trillion economy, besides how the wealth can be distributed equally among all sections," KTR said.

"We are a nation with the maximum number of poor people on the planet. I am not preaching communism, but unless wealth is distributed equitably and unless the government takes care of the most vulnerable, we may have civil strife," cautions KTR.

Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement that freebie culture is bad for the country, KTR said the fact remains that India is still a third world country. In the current political system, the biggest challenge for a leader is not capital management but people management. The minister stated that India and China had almost similar GDPs in the 1980s. Now, China is an 18 trillion-dollar economy, and India is still languishing at 3.4 trillion dollars. Similarly, Japan, despite its geographical and topographical challenges, is the third largest economy in the world.

Elucidating the achievements made by Telangana during the last eight years, especially the growth in GSDP and the per capita income. He claimed that Telangana made good use of natural and human resources and achieved 15 percent CAGR. Telangana's per capita income in 2014 was Rs 1.24 lakh and increased to Rs 2.75 lakh while the national average was Rs 1.49 lakh, he said Telangana issued nearly 22,000 clearances for industries through TS-IPASS and generated 21 lakh direct jobs so far.