 "Former Coal India CMD S Narsing Rao")
In May last year, around the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his council of ministers were sworn in, S Narsing Rao quit as the chairman & managing director of state-owned Coal India, the world's largest coal miner. The job came with a lot of prestige. Equally, it came with daunting challenges: the blame for any power shortage in the country is always put squarely on Coal India's inefficiency. Many felt the gritty Rao - he used to walk 8 km every day as a child to reach his school - was doing a fine job. He resigned because a transformative assignment had come his way. Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao, popularly addressed as KCR, the first chief minister of the new state of Telangana, wanted him to become his principal secretary. In this post, Rao is the chief minister's key advisor and troubleshooter.
What may have drawn Rao to Telangana is his roots in Medak, a town that lies adjacent to Hyderabad. The chief minister too belongs to Medak and represents the Gajewal constituency in the state legislative assembly. In fact, Rao's association with KCR, who as the head of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi led the agitation to carve out Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, goes back to 1987 when he was a sub-collector, a year after he had joined the elite Indian Administrative Service.
While KCR took over in Telangana, N Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party became the chief minister of the residual Andhra Pradesh state. As the chief minister of unified Andhra Pradesh from 1995 to 2004, Naidu had attracted large investments to the state, especially in information technology, and was credited for making Hyderabad a close rival to Bengaluru, India's answer to Silicon Valley. Soon after taking over, Naidu once again set about wooing investors to his state, to the extent that it became worrisome for the other southern states. This is the challenge KCR has to take head-on. And the man who he has chosen to help him in the endeavour is Rao.
The operations man
Senior bureaucrats in Hyderabad say KCR not only articulates his vision with clarity but also motivates his officers to implement it. "He is able to generate deeper insights from data, which is just a compilation of numbers to many, by mixing it with his own knowledge and experience," says Telangana Home Secretary B Venkatesham. "The guiding principle or the vision for the state is to improve the living standard of people on a sustainable basis," adds Rao. The idea is to spur growth through development in agriculture, energy and industry - growth that can generate employment.
To build on this plank, Rao says the topmost item on the KCR government's agenda was to maintain law and order. People are not really concerned about which party is in power so long as the atmosphere in the state is conducive to growth, he says. Next on the agenda was to identify the areas of growth. Clearly, agriculture had to be the first on the list of priorities, but it was felt that energy and industry needed an equal push. One early target was the addition of 10,000 Mw of capacity in power generation. Telangana currently has net power supply of 5500-5600 Mw. NTPC, the country's largest power generator, will undertake projects for 4,000 Mw, while the Telangana State Power Generation Company will add another 6,000 Mw. "In the next four years, we plan to add at least 6,000 Mw of the target," says Rao. This implies a growth rate of more than 22 per cent per annum.
To attract investment, a friendly industrial policy has been put in place. Telangana became the first state in the country to make faster clearances a statutory right. While approving the industrial policy in November 2014, the state assembly adopted the Right to Single-Window Clearance on the lines of the Right to Information. The Telangana State Industrial Project Approval & Self-certification System has been set up for this purpose. Officers will face penal action if they delay the applications. The system will consist of three establishments, one each for mega projects, large industries and small & medium enterprises. The state government plans to bring comprehensive legislation enshrining the above principles.
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BUILDING TELANGANA: THRUST AREAS Each of these areas will have its own sectoral policy, including a high-level advisory panel and an inter-departmental task force chaired by special chief secretary/ principal secretary of industries and commerce department |
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The Industrial Policy Framework lays down a mandate for minimum inspection and maximum facilitation. "Minimum inspection would encompass a system of no random inspections without cause," says the policy document. Subject to statutory requirements, the departments will develop a system where each industrial unit is inspected only once in three to four years and the cycle of inspections is fixed in advance. "Some random inspections will be planned to keep industry on its toes, but these inspections will be with the specific written permission of the head of the department," says the policy.
Maximum facilitation would encompass an effective system beyond the conventional single window as the anchor. Self-certification will be encouraged and automatic renewals will be implemented. There will be web-based helpline as well as help desks at Hyderabad and in the districts. Information availability and industry department transactions will be transparent and web-enabled. The office of the commissioner of industries and Telangana Industrial Infrastructure Corporation will have a citizens' charter covering all their activities.
Experienced hand
As the CMD of Coal India, Rao was witness to many problems related to land acquisition. In Telangana, he points out to the availability of an estimated two million acres of land that have been identified as unfit for cultivation. Based on a detailed survey of these land parcels, an industrial land bank is planned. Such unproductive land would be transferred to the Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation, which will determine the suitability of each land parcel for setting up industrial parks for specified sectors.
For the plan to work, a good road infrastructure is a crucial factor. The state has, therefore, awarded projects worth Rs 16,000 crore in the last three months. These are expected to be completed by 2016-17. Another Rs 27,000 crore will be spent on building a watergrid with 27 sub-grids.
Hyderabad, the capital, currently shared with Andhra Pradesh, is also being developed as an information technology investment region with an investment of Rs 10,000 crore over the next 10 years. In addition, Warangal is being developed as a satellite city. "Barring Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, no one can match us (in investment climate)," says Rao.
While the state may still be some time away from industrial take-off, many believe it has all the right ingredients, including policies, in place for growth. "The promise of faster clearances alone will have a huge impact on investments. Though these are early days, things will start moving in a positive direction in another 6-12 months," says Shiv Kumar Rungta, president of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
To a large measure, the success of the new state will also depend on the quality of its administrative set-up, something that the state has been struggling with because of the delay in the distribution of officers between the two states. Last month, the chief minister wrote to the Centre requesting the transfer to Telangana of several officers allocated to Andhra Pradesh after the bifurcation. Rao says if the state had had the right people for the right job from the start, by now it would have moved to the next state of development - output-oriented monitoring instead of input-oriented monitoring for projects that it is stuck with right now. Used to walking long distances, Rao knows that to reach his destination he only needs to keep moving.
