Dy Speaker Nadella Manohar addresses NRIs at Swagat Restaurant, Milpitas, California
Nadella Manohar, Dy Speaker of AP Assembly, known as a very knowledgeable, young, educated Congress Legislative member with a bright future, is California after his successful completion of participating in an International conference in Seattle, USA leading a team of IT entrepreneurs delegation from AP and he had to almost run a mock assembly when he met a group of NRI Telugus at Swagat Restaurant, Milpitas, CA on evening of Saturday, 22 May 2010.
Welcoming the gathering, Mr Jayaram Komati appreciated the role of Mr Nadella Maohar as Dy Speaker in the last two Assembly sessions which went through a turbulent times with separate and united State agitations. Later Mr Manohar answered a series of questions NRIs posed and discussed various issues. Some of the answers given/ views expressed by Mr Manohar are given under...
1) All said and done 75% of Indian population is still with agriculture and no Govt can neglect or avoid agriculture. With Dr YSR as CM, AP State Govt has taken so many projects.. Mr Rosayya Govt also will be contributing those programmes.. Govt of AP is making so many facilities to farmers.. For example, when I was in first year of my MLA period in 2004, getting 40 Taiwan made water spreads was a big task for a District... now they are made available on demand.
2) Public – Private partnership projects are welcome and Govt is ready to encourage them, support them. Even for IT and ITES companies, Govt is looking for specific proposals rather than general announcements. Govt is developing two/ three tier cities like Vijayawada, Vizag, Nellore, Tirupati and is giving lot of incentives to Entrepreneurs proposing to go to two/three tier cities rather than asking for support in Hyderabad which is already stangnated.
3) Though agitation in the state pulled us a bit in the fast pace in IT and business environment, AP still has time and opportunity to stay a head in competition. Bangalore is behind..but Chennai is coming up very fast. Now, ICICI is starting its huge back end operations with 20000 employees in Hyderabad shortly, which is again a booster to our IT plans.
4) India is a developing country... it cannot take decisions like a developed country. For example, creating a Outer Ring Road with 3500 crores of rupees is questionable in a State where funds are required for farmers, school children etc on subsidies, welfare schemes etc.. but after the Outer ring road is completed, every one enjoys the facility .. but going with that decision of creating an Infrastructure is a bold decision.
5) Similarly, Govt of India / Dr Manmohan Singh is aware that fertiliser subsidy given to farmers is mostly misused. Govt is aware that in some places fertilisers are overused spoiling the land.. But ours is a democratic country.. Political/ social angle will some times dominate business angle in a making decisions.
6) Telecasting Assembly sessions Live on TV is advisable as it exposes the MLAs to their public.. what ever they do ..good..bad..ugly..keeping silence..active, inactive, over active .. let every thing go to public.
7) Elections need a strategy.. Electing public is not innocent.. they are very clever and all past records show that public vote intelligently despite all Groups offering cash and other incentives. If Congress performs well in the next 3-4 years, they have a chance to win and come back to power.... if only they don’t perform well in governing the present term, they will not come back.
8) NRIs have responsibility to give back to their mother land and country.. it can be knowledge transfer, it can be an enterprise, it can be investments... if they have interest in politics, they are always welcome.. they can start working for starting political career at some level and at some place.
Explaining his initiatives, Mr Manohar informed that he worked actively/ coordinated for
a) Digitising the entire Assembly records since 1952 .. every thing can be found online very soon on Assembly’s exclusive web site.
b) Giving Executive assistance to MLAs: on a test basis, 3 MLAs are given one MBA Graduate each to assist them in doing proper planning, strategy making etc.. and now tied up with ISB ( Indian School of Business ) to give 40 MBAs to 40 MLAs to assist for 30 days as part of their MBA curriculum..
