Governor's straight talk floors industry

HYDERABAD: Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan has asked the industry captains to contribute higher chunk of funds for the development of the State in which their establishments are located.
“The profit the industry is making in spite of recession is huge. But, what percentage of it is being ploughed back to the State?” he asked exhorting the industry to devise corporate social responsibility programmes that would have lasting impact on the State. “I am not deriding your work, but we plant trees at the same venue every year calling it tree plantation and the same set of people turn up for blood donation”, he said in a lighter vein.
Stressing the need for the industry to go to ground for understanding the reach of programmes, he said organisations like the Confederation of Indian Industry were not expected to just prepare papers, but had the responsibility of ensuring implementation of at least few programmes. In this direction, he wanted the industry to come out with a vision document outlining plans it had for bringing investments into the State. “Each one of you should bring investments to the State,” he said.
CII meeting
He was addressing a public session on “sustaining inclusive growth in a challenging economy” organised as part of the annual meeting of State chapter of the CII here on Saturday. Mr. Narasimhan wanted all sections and segments of people, including rural population, to be taken together in the growth process as confining growth to a section would “deepen the divide”. The Governor who touched upon key segments of development including infrastructure and healthcare in his address wondered how planners were ‘looking at just tomorrow, not days beyond'. “The climate change for instance. Are we taking any steps or confining the issue to board room discussions?” the Governor questioned.
Accolades pour in
His speech won instant accolades from the audience comprising leading industrialists. CII-AP chairman Y. Harish Chandra Prasad remarked “we are, for the first time, seeing a no non-sense Governor”.
Responding to complaints of acute power shortages, he said the State was exploring a merchant power policy as well as measures to augment the generation capacity.
Indian School of Business dean Ajit Rangnekar said the first phase of globalisation was dominated by developed countries like the US and the second saw emerging economies like India and China supplying goods and services to developed world. Globalisation 3.0, the next phase where affordable business where high quality of goods and services would be provided at reasonable costs, was on the anvil.
Asserting that enough work had not been done in this direction, he wanted the Indian industry to evolve affordable solutions that would also make work profitable.
Small Scale Industries Minister D.K. Aruna, CII southern region chairman C.R. Swaminathan and others also spoke.