Rs 20,000 cr package for Kerala

Projects include container terminal at Vallarpadam

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today assured Kerala of an estimated Rs 20,000 crore investment projects, the highest ever promised by the Centre to the state.

This includes the international container transshipment terminal (ICTT) near Vallarpadam and the NTPC expansion project at Kayamkulam in Alapuzha, the foundation stones of which will be laid by the prime minister tomorrow.

However, no time frame has been given for the projects that include LNG re-gassification and petrochemical projects Chief Minister Oommen Chandy told reporters after the prime minister met a delegation of the Kerala Mps. The state ministers and MPs had submitted memoranda to the Prime Minister highlighting the state's various needs.

Chandy said a separate package for farmers, who were facing acute hardship, had been sought. The support must come in the form of a favourable exim policy which ensures sufficient protection to the farmers.

Another package for traditional industries like cashew, choir, handloom and handicrafts was also sought and the Prime Minister assured that he would favourably consider the pleas, the chief minister said.

In the mean while the Prime Minister observed that "adequate" importance was not being given to India's "inheritance" in the traditional medical system and suggested that it should be used creatively to ameliorate the sufferings of the people.

"Today, we witness a dramatic revival in the international medical community in the sciences of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani and other systems of medicines," he said.

"But we in India do not give adequate importance to this inheritance," he added at the ceremony for the handing over of the keys of former President KR Narayanan's ancestral home for to the Navajyoti Karunakaraguru Research Centre for Ayurveda and Siddha at Uzhavoor in Kottayam district.

"It is an ironic part of the rediscovery of our own heritage that we have begun to learn of the benefits of our traditional system of medicine through diffusion from the west," he said.

Singh said "Our traditional medical system emphasises the merits of the preventive rather than the curative medicine. Therefore, given the vast size of our population and the urgent need for health care solutions, we should examine our inheritance in the field of healing for the possible answers that we may obtain for the future," he said.

The centre is a unit of Shanti Ashram founded by Navajyothisree Karunakara Guru in Thiruvananthapuram.