Hyderabad: Telangana’s information technology minister K.T. Rama Rao gave the major credit for Hyderabad’s progress in IT to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
“I cannot take the credit for Microsoft being here. Hyderabad was not well known earlier, as it is today for IT. Mr Chandrababu Naidu went all the way to Mr Bill Gates and convinced him to set up the office in Hyderabad,” Mr Rama Rao said at the Mission Innovation — 2018 event held at the Tech Mahindra campus in Hyderabad.
Speaking about planned cities in India, Mr Rama Rao said, “Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh’s new capital) is coming up. My good wishes to them. I think it will come up very well with all the kind of planning that is going on.”
The minister said that Hyderabad was built in 450 years and in next five to seven years it will be different altogether, with hugely improved infrastructure in roads, power supply, water and civic amenities.
Cutting in on this rosy picture, the moderator of the session, C.P. Gurnani, MD and CEO of Tech Mahindra, reminded the minister that the roads had to be repaired for the visit of Ivanka Trump. “People said Ivanka Trump should visit you more often,” Mr Gurnani quipped.
Mr Rama Rao responded good-humouredly, “Yes, she should. She loved the biryani here. She can come back here any time.”
WIll improve city roads, KTR promises
He added more seriously that the “one thing I want to work on is roads. While Hyderabad's roads are decent compared to other metro cities, I think we could improve them. We cannot end up in an infrastructure inadequacy.”
Bringing truly world class infrastructure to Hyderabad is the need of the hour, but these things take time in planning and execution, the minister said.
Responding to a question on creating more Hyderabads, the minister said that Telangana state cannot afford to have more such cities.
“Instead, the government is planning to build self-contained townships around the Outer Ring Road of 160 km in such a way that people can live, play and work there and need not travel to work. "We need mini townships and not mini Hyderabads in Telangana," Mr Rama Rao said.
