The Change That I Expect Chiranjeevi’s Government to Bring into Andhra Pradesh
( Dr. Appalayya Meesala, Professor, Deccan School of Management, Hyderabad. ameesala@gmail.com phone: 9848514011)
Structural Interventions
Improve farm productivity by way of more research or innovations in farm technology. Allot heftier budgets for research on crop varieties, crop management practices, and data management; a remunerative farm economy will fund higher education, and ensures distributive justice. Encourage more investment in agriculture goods processing industry.
Encourage migration of rural folk to urban areas which give even an illiterate person the vision about higher standards of living, education, a wide variety of livelihood opportunities, civilization and assertiveness. Create more jobs in urban areas. Invite foreign direct investment in a number of industries and design the necessary incentives. Design the government-clearance process in such a way that any industry can be started in just 15 days. Improve the facilities in the urban areas to make them more hospitable.
Give high quality education to the poor. The poorest should have access to the best of education.
100% literacy in 5 years. Engage all the matriculates and pay them remuneration for making people literate on per-head basis. (If there is a scheme to pay each matriculate Rs.700 to make one person a literate, achieving 100% literacy is no big deal).
Spend heavily on roads, communication, power and public transport.
Spend heavily on medical care to the people through private hospital. (Work out a method to avoid false claims.)
Focus on research and the transfer of the research outcome to the industry, as done by Singapore and Hong Kong. More patents applications should be filed from Andhra Pradesh.
Develop 100 new cities in Andhra Pradesh
Governance Interventions
100% transparency about how government machinery makes decisions.
There should be quantitative measures for the performance of every government servant.
There should be computerized data on every living hand of this state. Plans are failing on account of wrong data and intuitive estimates. Our budget is going into wrong hands because insufficient and inaccurate data.
Every citizen should be treated like a customer to the government; he should be able to get a response for his letter, from the government department within 15 days, which can be called ‘the right to response’- right-to-response should be enacted. It can work wonders and be more useful to a common man than right to information. This ensures that farmer is not insulted or snubbed when he visits an MRO’s office for a certificate; Government offices-be it MRO and municipality- are cesspools of corruption, carelessness, lethargy and immunity from action.
Educational institutions should be led by the efficient, clean and honest- not on caste lines- let a Kamma or a Reddy or a Dalit lead if he is efficient and honest, and has no caste-tilt. This selection should be more transparent, and the selection criteria and their weights should be set by the honest officers.
Increase employment opportunities in government sector but pay by productivity metrics, but not as an honorarium.
Government Officers should be recruited from private industries-there are a large number of highly energetic and vibrant turnaround professionals who can turn a loss-making company into a profit-making company; government should draw its recruits from them.
Reduce the incentives for politics-such arrangement can break the cycle-“spend money on elections and earn money many times what has been spent, by illegal methods”.
Any politician trying to supply to government or do contracts to government or recommend award of contracts to their kith and kin should be disqualified from contesting for any public office.
All appointments to the corporations and public sector undertakings- from chairman to director - should be based on merit and previous experience, and they should be paid reasonably well but not low sum given as an honorarium.
Crush muscle power ruthlessly with iron hand; if law should prevail, more investment comes and more development will take place.
The concerns of the tribal area people and their development should be addressed. All the vulnerable people, the poorest in scheduled castes, backward classes, and other unreserved communities should be provided housing, employment and unemployment allowance.
Make a statute to punish severely who don’t pay their dues to the creditors, loans taken from banks, and any other economic offences committed at individual level, to bring in discipline which is needed for free movement of savings.
