Telangana has left behind statehood uncertainties with 8,000 firms, including global majors, investing there. Question is, can KCR & Co. beat anti-incumbency?
Hyderabad: When Congress president Rahul Gandhi spoke of “family rule” in Telangana last August, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s son, K.T. Rama Rao, responded with a scathing retort. “Irony just died a thousand deaths,” he tweeted.
KTR, as the 42-year-old minister is popularly known, went on: “If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?”
Whataboutery apart, dynastic politics as an issue has caught on in Telangana ahead of 7 December assembly polls, with speculation doing the rounds that Chandrasekhar Rao or KCR as he is popularly known, is preparing to pass on the baton to his son.
KCR, 64, has given plum portfolios to his son — IT, municipal administration and urban development, industries and commerce and NRI affairs — while his nephew T. Harish Rao is the minister of irrigation, marketing and legislative affairs. The chief minister’s daughter, K. Kavitha, is the MP from Nizamabad.
If Chandrababu Naidu was once called the CEO of united Andhra Pradesh, KTR is now being described as the CEO of Telangana.
“KCR is very particular that his children don’t dirty their hands,” a senior leader of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) told ThePrint.
“KTR is like the CEO whose responsibility is to bring about reforms in governance and bring in investments. KCR takes care of politics and whatever else is needed to stay in power.”
This division of work in the family seems to have worked in matters of governance as Telangana has re-emerged as a favourite investment destination.
“We have got 8,000 new companies coming into Telangana. They are not just on paper. 6,000 of them have already started functioning,” said K. Kavitha, KCR’s daughter.
Also read: With lack of strategy and state leadership, BJP prepares to flounder in Telangana
Topping ease-of-doing-business charts
Andhra Pradesh topped the ease-of-doing-business ranking this year but Telangana came a close second. It’s a commendable achievement for a state after the tumultuous 2009-14 period when violent agitations for statehood had shaken the confidence of potential investors.
“The government mood then was what we called ‘ABCD’ — avoid, bypass, confuse and delay. This period was marked by policy paralysis, power crisis and a general feeling of uncertainty,” Devendra Surana, chairman, FICCI, Telangana State Council, told ThePrint.
“Big companies didn’t really leave Hyderabad but they went somewhere else if they had to expand. All this has changed now and you have to give credit to KTR for that.”
As compared to the residual state of Andhra Pradesh, which has ports, Telangana has the natural disadvantage of being land-locked but the KCR government has made up for it with business-friendly policies.
The government’s flagship initiative — TS-IPASS or Telangana State Industrial Project Approval and Self-Certification System Act, 2014 — resulted in a cumulative investment of
Rs 1,23,478 crore, as per government documents. It brought a single window for all government approvals in a time-bound manner.
“We decided that we would run a corruption-free government. That’s why industries want to come to Hyderabad,” said Kavitha. “There is zero power interruption. We have reserved 10 per cent of the water under Mission Bhagirath (a drinking water project) for industries.”
She further said that the government has also made it easier for approvals. “All permissions must be given within 15 days. If not, the 16th day you can start functioning and the government will have no right to question you. We gave it as a right to industrialists to establish a company in Telangana,” Kavitha said.
In 2017-18, the state recorded a per capita income of Rs 1,75,534, about 55 per cent over the national average. Big-ticket investments have come to Hyderabad from Indian and global majors such as ITC Limited, Proctor & Gamble, Adani Logistics Limited, Biocon, Amazon, IKEA, GE, Dow DuPont, and Dubai Bin Zayed Group, among a host of others.
Tata and Lockheed Martin have decided to open India’s first of its kind metal-to-metal binding facility. GE and Tata Group have decided to pursue military engine and aircraft system opportunities in Telangana.
Also read: Telangana may not be a cakewalk for K Chandrashekar Rao despite popular sops
Jury out on electoral dividend of policies
These big names and official figures may paint a very rosy picture of the KCR government, but the jury is out on whether they are good enough to beat anti-incumbency.
Unlike then CEO of united Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, whose electoral loss in 2004 was attributed to his alleged neglect of rural Andhra, KCR has been showering sops on farmers, fishermen, cattle-grazers, and almost every section of the society. But good economics doesn’t necessarily mean good politics in India.
As for the succession plan and talks of KCR moving to the Centre, the chief minister’s daughter denied it with an interesting explanation.
“It doesn’t work like that in politics. It’s present-day dynamics. Today if I am talking about one year ahead, I am certainly not a good politician,” she said. “All I can say is that we have to pass this (electoral test) and get back to power…. And when an opportunity presents itself in terms of national politics, we can think about it.”
All the Big-ticket investments from Indian and global majors such as ITC Limited, Proctor & Gamble, Adani Logistics Limited, Biocon, Amazon, IKEA, GE, Dow DuPont, and Dubai Bin Zayed Group, and a host of others had bought land before Andhra Pradesh was divided. In KCR’s regime no company bought any land.