What is in store for 2019?
Prominent personalities chart out their plans and the steps that they will take towards making things better.
T. Harish Rao, TRS leader
In the New Year, development and welfare schemes will reach everyone in society. Telangana had witnessed excellent development in 2018 and as a result of which KCR’s (Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s) government was formed once again. The state will be developed in all sectors.
Rakul Preet Singh, actress
I would love to see a huge breakthrough in education in the years to come. We still need to achieve a lot in education, especially in the interiors, where people need to be educated. It is important for the country’s future and if we can start working towards it, that’s a beautiful change I would like to see in the years to come. If we achieve 100 per cent education, it will help grow the country in a better way. The other thing I would like to see is people being positive. There is so much negativity in society and so much hatred for no reason. Each one is playing their own game in this competition, but don’t spread hatred or negativity, spread happiness. I think live-and-let-live approach, and be happy, spread smiles is the change I want to see. I personally don’t believe in New Year resolutions; if I want to make a resolution, I don’t wait for a New Year’s Day. I didn’t have a release in 2018, so I am looking forward to 2019 as some of my films are releasing this New Year.
M. Mahendar Reddy, Telangana Director General of Police
Our commitment to community 2019 is declared as the year of citizen-friendly uniform service delivery across all police stations one state one service one experience for all citizen at all times and we are going to work towards it.
Pullela Gopichand, national badminton chief coach
On a personal front, with 2019 being the qualification year for 2020 Olympics, I would love to see my players being injury-free and break barriers to reach new heights. I would want the government to look at fitness as a policy as there is huge need for us to be motivated to be active play less of gadgets and more of participative sports. We also need more peace in the world. In India, it’s the year of general elections, I hope they are smooth and there is a stable government in place. I would also like sport to be a lot more in focus I feel that is essential. We as a nation have taken care of literacy only in an alphabetical and numerical sense but truly I think physical literacy is important.
N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, TPCC president
We wish well for the people of Telangana. We also wish that the aspirations of the Telangana people will come true in 2019. In this year the Congress party will rise like the phoenix, which rises from the ashes.
M. Kodandaram, Telangana Jana Samiti president
The year 2019 should make the farmers happy with timely rains. The government should bring changes in the economic models. It should also work for employment generation in the state this year. TJS leaders and workers will work hard for the expansion of the party to overcome the issues the party is facing.
Chada Venkat Reddy, CPI State Secretary
We wish that 2019 will see the completion of the irrigation projects. We are also expecting social justice in Telangana. The CPI will do its best in 2019. The party leaders will take up several measures to expand the party by fighting against the local issues.
Dr K. Laxman, BJP state President
The 2019 should bring happiness and prosperity for the people of Telangana. The government should focus on the overall development of the state in this New Year. The TRS government should stick to its promises and should implement them without any failure.
Rakesh Munnanooru, founder, WhistleDrive
Just the way government took initiative to level the playing field for brick-and-mortar stores to take on funding-backed online unicorns, we are expecting that there would be a normalisation in transportation space as well. This will fuel the growth of our cab partners and help in bringing a certainity to their earnings. We are also expecting a better infrastructure for e-vehicles as corporates are increasingly looking for eco-friendly solutions. Change is inevitable in both the cases and 2019 looks like the year of transformation.
Abhishek Deshpande, co-founder, Rapidue Technologies
There is a clear shift in consumer needs and demands towards advanced, safe and secure accessories for their smartphones. From the technology standpoint, we will see a lot of advancement in wireless mobile phone accessories in 2019. But the industry also faces severe threats from sub-standard products without BIS, FCC and CE certifications or rather fake products available in the market. In 2019, we expect stringent enforcement of law to curb the availablity of fake products. We expect governments to look at massive data pooled in at a city and municipality levels to address growing volumes of waste recyclables on a sustainable basis.
B.V.R. Mohan Reddy, chairman, CYIENT Ltd
Today, upskilling and reskilling of over 50 per cent of the industry workforce has become an indispensable obligation for the IT-ITES industry. Also, students and fresh graduates need to be skilled in the new technologies. The Union government has identified Information Technology as one of the 12 champion services sectors earlier this year and initiated an action plan. As a part of the Union Budget 2018-19, it is heartening to see NITI Aayog setting-up a national level programme on Artificial Intelligence. But to create growth momentum, the government of India has to create clusters around each of the disruptive technologies. The creation of Centres of Excellence (CoE) in Big Data, Analytics, and AI is a good first step in this direction, but we need to populate these CoEs with domain experts to truly provide the right advice and consultancy to the industry.
Ashwin Reddy, MD Aparna Enterprises: The real estate sector also witnessed a major revolution in the past year with government policy changes. The resulting transparency has forced developers and approval authorities to maintain high levels of compliance. We are looking forward to project approvals being processed more quickly with Single Window Clearance, resulting in reduced construction costs, thereby substantially reducing property costs. An efficient, fair and transparent system would result in a revived demand for new projects in 2019. Last year's Budget saw the affordable housing segment being granted infrastructure status. We predict more government support with infrastructure status being granted to the entire sector in 2019. This will lead to financing being available to the developer at lower interest rates. In turn, this would make projects more affordable for the home buyer.
Nikhil Siddharth, actor
I would like to see a big change in the caste system and also education for poor. In 2018 we have witnessed some bad incidents especially the honour killings that shook the Telugu States. Remove the caste system in our society and also the discrimination between people which I want to see the big change. All people are equal and I hope that the column 'caste' removed from the applications that we fill for anything. This is the big change I want to see and also the immediate priority. The other big thing is education for poor. There are many children who can't afford good education and I hope the government should give priority to the education to those children. As a personal front in the year 2018, I wanted to do at least two films, but only one films releases. So, I decided to take a resolution that I signed four films now and at least three of them can hit the screen in the New Year. I am looking forward for the New Year with more positive and great success.
