By: CR Sukumar & Payal Ganguly
The new government in Telangana is making it loud and clear that it’s willing to play hardball and pull out all the stops to transform India’s youngest state as the preferred destination for investors.
It believes that its capital Hyderabad will be the engine that powers the state’s economic growth, luring investments with its wellheeled infrastructure and cosmopolitan character and, in turn, taking the battle directly to Bangalore and Chennai -the current investor favourites in the south.
Hyderabad’s growth which soared in the earlier part of the previous decade faced roadblocks after agitations for Telangana intensified, but the state’s IT and Panchayat Raj minister K Taraka Rama Rao (KTR) said all that will soon change. “We want to send out a loud message to the people around the world that it is business as usual in Hyderabad,“ said KTR, 37, the son of the state’s chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.
“That is the reason why we have started focussing excessively on the IT sector.“
The Telangana government is keen to revitalise growth in Hyderabad, which KTR said, “has some unique advantages which no city can take away from.“ “Compared to Bangalore, Hyderabad has thrice the infrastructure available at a third of cost. Similarly , Hyderabad enjoys twice the infrastructure of Chennai at half of the cost,“ he said. KTR attributes the recent dip in Hyderabad’s IT growth to the absence of political stability , decisive leadership and global economic slowdown.
Source: Times of India