Call it the case of history repeating itself. As someone said when history re-visits for the first time it’s a tragedy and when it gets repeated again, its comedy.
When Murasoli Maran was the union industry minister, he drove away with a clutch of automobile projects to Tamil Nadu. Today, his son Dayanidhi Maran is doing the same by hijacking big ticket telecom investments to his home state. And what do we in Andhra Pradesh get? Crumbs!
Maran had made his intentions very clear right from the start. But he was bogged down by a doughty Jayalalithaa, who made sure that none his projects saw the light of the day. Once madam went back to Poes Garden, and Dr Kalaignar took over at Fort St George, life was a lot more easy. Land was there for the asking and so were the incentives. But the biggest draw was not land or doles. It was an unwritten commitment that those who invested in Tamil Nadu would be taken care of by Maran & Co. For sure, Maran is a man who can decide on huge tenders floated by BSNL and MTNL.
Maran & Co have handsomely rewarded many of the biggies who have made Sriperambadur their home base with huge contracts from these two public sector telecom entities. These include LG, Samsung, Erricson and many others. And what do ‘our’ ministers and MPs do? Nothing! For they are busy doing nothing.
With a brute majority in the Lok Sabha, our state MPs should have fought every project that was spirited away by Maran & Co. They did not, and just let it go. No questions have been asked in Parliament about it, and for sure it will never be asked. Even the semi conductor policy, which will benefit our state has been held up in game of political volleyball between Maran and Chidambaram. Many say that the policy delay is deliberate and is aimed at killing the Sem India project in Hyderabad.
Not that the state government has made any serious effort. YSR has been bogged down between Botsa and Bidi (and now Ramoji and excess land issue). Our dear chief minister has had hardly anytime to look at industrial development in the state. When media queried him about Volks shift to Pune, the Doctor was magnanimous. “Let them go, others will come”. The problem is that there are no more car companies waiting to set their units in India. Most of them are here, and are expanding their facilities in all states, except mana Andhra Pradesh. Except for Lokeswara Rao's car project, which is still on the drawing board!
Hardware major Dell, after raising hopes of setting up manufacturing unit in our hardware park, recently opened its unit in Chennai! The Tamilian city is already home to Nokia, Flextronics and Foxconn.
Even the likes of Apache footwear are thinking of shutting their Nellore unit and moving Tamil Nadu. Maran’s men are sitting in Chennai and fishing in troubled waters of Nellore. To add to this, the recent move by Nike to move to Chennai has been prompted by a verbal directive of the US government to companies from US of A to slow down investments in AP, post the IMG fiasco. The hasty Ordinance taking over IMG land will in all probability be quashed by the High Court. It will not only result in a loss of face for the state, but also cost them billions of dollars in arbitration.
Companies investing here will think twice. If Naidu comes to power two years from now, will he cancel all of YSR’s projects? The lack of sanctity for a government document as in the case of IMG will make things worse for us and life will be a lot easier for Maran & Co.
Are our MPs and Union Ministers and the state government listening ?
PS: Recently, telecom major Motorola moved the Delhi High Court, seeking to restrain the state-run BSNL from awarding the order for the installation of the proposed 45-million GSM lines to Ericsson and Nokia, the two companies short-listed by BSNL. Read my lips - both Ericcson and Noika have their units in Tamil Nadu. Quid pro quo?
Share your views, mail at to apmedia@rediffmail.com
When Murasoli Maran was the union industry minister, he drove away with a clutch of automobile projects to Tamil Nadu. Today, his son Dayanidhi Maran is doing the same by hijacking big ticket telecom investments to his home state. And what do we in Andhra Pradesh get? Crumbs!
Maran had made his intentions very clear right from the start. But he was bogged down by a doughty Jayalalithaa, who made sure that none his projects saw the light of the day. Once madam went back to Poes Garden, and Dr Kalaignar took over at Fort St George, life was a lot more easy. Land was there for the asking and so were the incentives. But the biggest draw was not land or doles. It was an unwritten commitment that those who invested in Tamil Nadu would be taken care of by Maran & Co. For sure, Maran is a man who can decide on huge tenders floated by BSNL and MTNL.
Maran & Co have handsomely rewarded many of the biggies who have made Sriperambadur their home base with huge contracts from these two public sector telecom entities. These include LG, Samsung, Erricson and many others. And what do ‘our’ ministers and MPs do? Nothing! For they are busy doing nothing.
With a brute majority in the Lok Sabha, our state MPs should have fought every project that was spirited away by Maran & Co. They did not, and just let it go. No questions have been asked in Parliament about it, and for sure it will never be asked. Even the semi conductor policy, which will benefit our state has been held up in game of political volleyball between Maran and Chidambaram. Many say that the policy delay is deliberate and is aimed at killing the Sem India project in Hyderabad.
Not that the state government has made any serious effort. YSR has been bogged down between Botsa and Bidi (and now Ramoji and excess land issue). Our dear chief minister has had hardly anytime to look at industrial development in the state. When media queried him about Volks shift to Pune, the Doctor was magnanimous. “Let them go, others will come”. The problem is that there are no more car companies waiting to set their units in India. Most of them are here, and are expanding their facilities in all states, except mana Andhra Pradesh. Except for Lokeswara Rao's car project, which is still on the drawing board!
Hardware major Dell, after raising hopes of setting up manufacturing unit in our hardware park, recently opened its unit in Chennai! The Tamilian city is already home to Nokia, Flextronics and Foxconn.
Even the likes of Apache footwear are thinking of shutting their Nellore unit and moving Tamil Nadu. Maran’s men are sitting in Chennai and fishing in troubled waters of Nellore. To add to this, the recent move by Nike to move to Chennai has been prompted by a verbal directive of the US government to companies from US of A to slow down investments in AP, post the IMG fiasco. The hasty Ordinance taking over IMG land will in all probability be quashed by the High Court. It will not only result in a loss of face for the state, but also cost them billions of dollars in arbitration.
Companies investing here will think twice. If Naidu comes to power two years from now, will he cancel all of YSR’s projects? The lack of sanctity for a government document as in the case of IMG will make things worse for us and life will be a lot easier for Maran & Co.
Are our MPs and Union Ministers and the state government listening ?
PS: Recently, telecom major Motorola moved the Delhi High Court, seeking to restrain the state-run BSNL from awarding the order for the installation of the proposed 45-million GSM lines to Ericsson and Nokia, the two companies short-listed by BSNL. Read my lips - both Ericcson and Noika have their units in Tamil Nadu. Quid pro quo?
Share your views, mail at to apmedia@rediffmail.com
9 comments:
Maran never hesitate to get a project by killing others oppertunities. Any body know why he left much louded Fabcity project to AP.?...coz..Maran know pretty well that, Vinod Agarwal of Sem India is not capble of doing things... and Business Savvy Maran got the pulse of Sem India at his 1st meeting itself. Surprisingly...YSR is popularising Sem..V.Agarwal..now knowing the background. People who are optimsitic on FabCity... pl. forget about it. YSR is not capable of getting an IT project to the state. It's Sure he is expert in minting money through irrigation project...coz..he knows well how to cheat the exchequer in the name of contracts. It's YSR's Core area.
So, Whatever the developement happened so far in IT sector is not because of Naidu or YSR..it's all US and Other westren companies necessity. and it seems There may not be much in the box to happen in YSR's regime to claim, as Naidu showcased.
Let's Appriciate Maran, instead pinning him...coz... he is the man hwo is having integrity towards his mother state. Weldone Maran...Keep grabbing.
-Media Alert.
It seems YSR's family itself doesn't have confidence in AP's future. That's why they invest everywhere else but AP.
hi my friend,
ur perfectly right. but naidu did the same thing to get the IT majors to invest in ap using (threatening with) his outside support to the then nda govt.
It's a telling comment on our the quality of MPs we have in parliament. Can ever think of Botsa Jhansi taking part in a debate with the likes of Arun Jaitley and Gurudas Dasgupta or Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
For our MPs the post and the perks that go with it matters. Nothing else. To hell with the state, that seems to be their motto.
YSR keeps singing the rural song, pretty well knowing that farmers will only take free electricity and pay him nothing in taxes.
Surya Prakash Reddy
I think all mediamen should think on what should be done to improve the image of the state.
If Andhra Pradesh wants to become a powerful industrial state, it needs to encourage investors from other parts of the country, rather than thinking of wooing the foreign investor. Now that we would very soon have wider and smooth roads, private ports and a huge international airport, it is time to focus on employment-oriented industries.
With or without Eenadu, Andhra Jyothi, Vaartha, Andhra Bhoomi, Andhra Prabha, Prajasakthi, Visalandhra, Deccan Chronicle, The Hindu, The Times of India and The Indian Express, we as duty-bound watchdogs should start visualising the shape of things on par with policy makers, if not beyond.
Let not the fight for petty posts in office sabotage the view points of individuals.
Let us show our elected representatives that they are a bunch morons, barring a few, who do not even know who bought their inner garments.
Let us take upon the mantle of uncovering the hidden agendas of the likes of Marans and Ramojis, who pose a greater threat to the economy and social set up of the country.
Let us emphasise more on infrastructure-based projects.
Let us set up more world class universities to attract the rich kids from the Third world, which in turn would force the best of the world's teaching talent to land in this country.
Let us think globally and act locally.
Hi,
Latest news.
This Maran is allotting the frequency of non-sun channels to wimax. All the other channels have to search for new satellites now.
Sweta tiwari
Dear Mr Blog Author
I have so far refrained from acknowledging the contents of your blog for fear of giving legitimacy to your sneaky views. But I have learnt in the last two days that some of your muck-raking has caused personal injury to some of my former colleagues all of whom I hold in some affection. One former colleague has written to me in great pain and I feel impelled to appeal to your sense of fairness and discretion__if you possess one. It gives me no pleasure to see myself being painted in vivid colours while at the same time my former colleagues are tarred. All that you have achieved by way of your boy-scout blog is to allow snitches and weasels to carp at their personal betes noir from the safety of their dank cloisters.
I notice that you have now switched to analysis of impersonal issues. I welcome it. But permit me to remind you that a blog that has among its respondents one who describes a newspaper__perhaps the very one for which he works__as a 'randikhana' seriously impairs its own credibility.
I am all for free journalism. Our profession is best practised in the bullring of dissent__frank, fearless and brutal. But one corner of it must always be kept for kindness.
Also, please note that dissent from the safety of anonymity is no dissent. The gulags of Stalin were not flattened by snipers in the shadows but by writers under the searchlights.
Ram Karan
Dear Ram,
First and foremost, we express our sincere apologies to all those who have been hurt by the content on the Comment section of the blog.
I hope you do distinguish between the Posts on the blog and the comments. You cannot link our credibility with the quality of the comments, like you won’t judge the edit page quality based on the depth of thought in readers’ letters.
On our part, we did appeal to readers not to misuse the comment section and have been blocking some outright nasty ones.
Ram, there is no gainsaying that newspapers have been repeatedly and are still (ab)used by political leaders, to divert attention from real issues and to settle personal scores by maligning adversaries. Of late, media (TV mostly, print to a lesser extent) has been allowing and encouraging the trend because of the ‘entertainment’ value and the expected spin-off --- higher circulation / viewership. Narendra & KCR's statements (Sonia nu bazaaruku yeedusta), Nannapaneni's outbursts and many more examples easily come to mind. (If it doesn’t hurt you, recall how many such reports that you would have edited (even embellished) and cleared).
If that’s the case with the media, how can you expect that none would take (undue) advantage of a public forum like this? Moreover, in an interactive forum like this blog one cannot black out all comments.
We are sure you would have seen the faces behind most of the comments. When the ‘seniors’ are unmasking themselves in the darkness of anonymity, the upstarts’ (R..kana commentor) (mis)adventure should be condoned.
Well, now that you have written to us, should we take it as an (unwitting) acknowledgement of our sneaky views and your stamp of legitimacy to them? Sorry, we can’t help being flippant at Times!
On a more a serious note, since you welcome our new focus, may we request your contribution? It would be a privilege for us and education for many. So, please… Vikram
Dear RK,
Please continue enjoying the sneaky views on this site without acknowledging them.
No one is waiting for your stamp on the blog.
Your discovery of pain over muck-raking is uncalled for.
No journalist's character has been undressed on this blog.
One thing you can do through this forum is to apologise to all your chamchas who feel naked.
An appeal for kindness for your former colleagues sounds naive, to say the least.
Stop lobbying with the blog owners for a bunch of morons.
The 'randikhana' you nurtured is growing stronger by the day, without 'their' help.
Grow up my friend. There is a lot more for you to learn in this world.
Post a Comment