Caste-based voter tagging
For the very first time, we have caste tagged voters in Telangana State and Andhra Pradesh. Whether we like it or not, Indian politics runs on caste and we want to predict voter behaviour by 2019. This time, in the TD, we had area in-charges and via their voter IDs, I can tag them to their booth and learn the voter behaviour. We wrote three million personalised letters and home delivered six million pamphlets. As we knew the swing booths to win, we did target them and win with a convincing margin.
Defectors from TD to TRS
I am not worried about two senior leaders. They have never spoken to me in person or on phone. TD is a factory, we will keep producing leaders. The rest of the leaders have no problem working with us. I spend more than two hours every day discussing issues with karyakartas. The Chief Minister has said that if he is not available, then leaders can talk to me. If people want to defect to another party, they shouldn’t give silly reasons. If they really are loyal to people, they should resign and go join another party.
Power crisis in Telangana State
Give us the power department of TS for three months. We will solve the power crisis. With all due respect, I want to ask the TS ministers if they are monitoring the situation at all? How many feeders do they have? Have they done any reviews? What are the plans for summer? AP has locked up its requirement for the summer. The AP Chief Minister has planned it all. The TS government, meanwhile, could not even introduce a Budget.
On insuring party cadres and rightful empowerment
My primary agenda in the party is cadre welfare. Karyakartas are the base of every party, the challenge, however, is to financially empower them. Till now, corruption has been the easy way out. But now we want to identify and rightfully empower them. We are trying to map their interests. When I was at Heritage, we gave bulk coolers to karyakartas. One guy in Medchal starting making '70,000 a month. If we have 80,000 booths by 2019, it will be easier to identify and economically empower them. We have now started a cadre welfare fund for karyakartas who meet with accidents. We are increasing the accident insurance up to '2 lakh and medical insurance up to '50,000 and with this, we will be the largest insurance group in the country and we will be top 10 in the world. We are tying up back to back with National Insurance. We have a strong database of 2.5 million karyakartas. Like Aadhaar is for the government, voter ids are for the party. We are completely data driven and want to analyse all this data.”
Real-time survey during elections
For elections, our survey was completely tabletised. Our volunteers were doing field surveys for us and giving us real-time updates. It was the largest in the country as we were analysing 3 lakh samples every five days. We knew where we were dipping and also the factors affecting this.
On Jagan, Pawan Kalyan and other competitors in the next 2019 elections
Only time will tell about the next elections and opponents. It’s just been six months. This is not the time for politics, now is the time for delivery. That is the difference between TD and TRS. As long as we deliver on our promises and and not get arrogant with the process, TD will be there for ever. When we asked people, why would they vote for Jagan Mohan Reddy, they said it was because of the welfare schemes. We have already dealt with that. What took them five years to achieve, we have delivered that in just four months. TRS is focusing more on politics and blaming other for everything. Even if they have a fight at home, they might blame us for it.”
On difficulties in development plans:
So far, we don’t see any challenges. There is a lot of interest in the state. Very few states offer what AP can. We have an amazing coastline, a scenic countryside and abundant minerals so there is an enormous amount of interest. Countries like Japan, China and Singapore have expressed keen interest to invest in AP. Andhraites are quite entrepreneurial also.
Viable projects in AP and funding
We have promised 14 airports, 13 hardware parks and many more food parks. There is an amendment in the food park policy. There is abundant interest to come and invest. Airports will be on PPP mode. We need to build this soon as the prices are going up. The GMR airport cost '2,500 crore when it was built, but now just the Chennai terminal cost '2,500 crore. We have a walking encyclopedia (Chandrababu Naidu) and he built a whole city. His experience is what is helping us.
Gas-based power in the state
Piyush Goyal made it quite clear on the way forward. He said we will link the pricing to the gas price. If we don’t do that, it will be unviable. And today, even thermal has become quite expensive. If I look at numbers today, the latest bit says solar and wind are turning out to be cheaper than fossil fuel. I mean prices are bound to go up but it is manageable.
On Hero project being bagged by AP
We got the Hero Motors project in 45 days. In my view, there are only two ways to get investments. One is to offer low-cost high quality power. The second is a reasonable labour regulatory framework. If we deliver on these two, majority of the companies are willing switch. Because no other states are willing to give you these two, especially on the southern coast. Nobody has 24X7 power, quality power and labour laws are bad. They are unable to do business. Tamil Nadu is trying but I doubt if they can deliver because financially they are not sound.”
On government talks with companies for investment
I have no clue who they are talking to. I will only know once it is at a certain level. The political office only knows when it comes to signing. Last time I met with a few bureaucrats at home casually and one of them suggested an ingenious idea. They said let’s read all the annual reports of the top 500 companies. In their annual reports they commit on capital investments so anyone who wants to invest in South India, let us go target them. Hero Motors started off from a newspaper article saying they were looking at South India and from the day we read that till signing the MoU, it was 45 days.
On infrastructure in cities
I have no plans; I have many roles. I can only make suggestions. But the plan is made by the committee. There are always going to be calamities, natural or man-made, but if the infrastructure is good, cities survive. Let’s take Visakhapatnam, the major problem was power. The government is quickly restoring power with traditional lines and after that they want to lay underground cables. Once that is done if, God forbid, we have Hudhud version 2.0, we are ready. If power is there, rest is easy.
On capital in Vijayawada
All I know is that it will have world-class roads, underground cables and drainage. It’s pretty straightforward. North Singapore had a river, which was not clean. They cleaned up that river and it opened eight parcels of real estate. Cleaning up the river cost them $250 million. Once they opened those eight parcels, the first parcel was sold at about $1 billion. So if we plan the capital properly over the next 20 years, it should not have any budget bearing, the state should not spend even a penny in building the new capital. The roads, Secretariat, Assembly and government infrastructure will be world class. The CM is looking at world class bids to come in. He is reaching out to all architects in the world to submit their proposals on how to build these buildings.
The capital is as good as the legal framework surrounding it. For that too, they are getting law firms who specialise in legal frameworks for an urban city. It will look at issues like zoning, workflow management. The Secretariat is going to be completely computerised. All this has implications and you need legal framework to make it legal. There has to be an Act for the capital.
On name of the capital:
There will be a new name. It hasn’t really been thought through. Now they are focusing on getting the basics going. It will take another six months before grounding the capital and about five to six years to finish a basic capital.
On capital delivery as a marketing tool for the next election
We would have delivered by then. But the capital is a beginning and there is never an end. In less than five years, all the marquee buildings will be there. We built the Cyber City in 18 months. In this day and age, once you finalise a master plan, it is quite easy to build, 24 months max. The state is eager to shift and get all the infrastructure there.
On next elections in the state
Lets talk about power. We have delivered 24 hours power in three months. Pensions, forget anyone dying in stampedes, nobody even had to break a sweat to get pensions in AP. We had teams going around every house to get data. We are delivering everything at doorsteps. Look at farm loan waiver, in TS, there is a spate of suicides. There is nothing like that in AP. We have formed a corporation. The first installment has been transferred. The balance, plus 10 per cent interest, will be paid over the next four years. We have a five-year mandate.
Olans to build sports infrastructure in AP:
My father has done a lot for sports in the undivided state. Now, after the bifurcation, every facility has remained in TS. Andhra has zero. The plan for sports is to build a sporting university — a township around sports. We want to get the best universities from Australia here. There is a complete mismatch vis-a-vis the number of coaches and the players we produce in India.
We are looking at infrastructure required. I have been talking to Pullela Gopichand (national coach) to build a world-class badminton academy, his largest, flagship academy in AP. Similarly, we are talking to other players to build an entire eco-system, like a sports university. What you see in Gachibowli is a very small part. The Indian Military Games was something that we had dreamt of getting. We want to attract talent from South and Southeast Asia. This will be centrally located because it’s not just about the stadium, but the social and educational infrastructure that needs to come around it. For example a badminton player has an entirely different rhythm - he/ she needs to play for two hours and take a break. We have to time it with their education so the curriculum and all has to be customised. A decentralised approach will be in place but we will have a world-class institution that is centralised.
There is going to be a North-South road on the beach. That’s a dream we have and we intend to lay a cycling track next to it.
Women and socio-economic empowerment
Like Amul is the cooperative for milk in Gujarat, we are planning to start a similar cooperative for fishermen here. We are talking to TATA Trust and a few more, where they will also do processing and retailing like Japan. There will be specific land allocation for them. We are also empowering wives of fishermen by training them for employment opportunities. And among women, I think the “can do” attitude should never die in them. We do not have enough women CEOs and we need to empower them.”
