Politicians need to focus on economics not politics: KTR

Telangana's minister for industries, commerce and information technology K.T. Rama Rao on Thursday called for politicians to focus on economics rather than on politics.

He said it was unfortunate that leaders in India focus on politics and not on the economy.

India is in a perennial mode of elections and politicians were always more focused on winning elections than creating wealth for the next generations, he said while addressing at the NHRD 'Decode The Future- The National Conference'.

"We are the world's largest democracy and elections happen throughout the year and the leaders are always seized with politics," he said.

K.T. Rama Rao, popularly known as KTR, also underlined the need for ensuring equitable distribution of wealth.

India was the most populous country in the world and yet a majority of the wealth of the nation was owned by a few individuals, he pointed out.

He said it was the primary responsibility of every single government to ensure wealth distribution.

"We need to think whether the leadership of our nation is giving us the aspirations of being a 25 trillion economy, besides how the wealth can be distributed equally among all sections," KTR said.

"We are a nation with the maximum number of poor people on the planet. I am not preaching Communism but unless wealth is distributed equitably and unless the government takes care of the most vulnerable, we may have civil strife," he warned.

Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement that freebie culture is bad for the country, KTR said the fact remains that India is still a third world country.

He said that India which recently surpassed China as the most populous state with 1.4 billion has the biggest advantage both in terms of natural and Human resources.

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader believes that the biggest challenge for a leader is not capital management but people management.

He pointed out that the maiden age of 65 per cent of India's think force is 35 years and maiden age of 50 per cent of think force is 28 years.

"We are the youngest nation on the planet but we are not using this asset effectively," he said.

Unfortunately, the youth were being trained and groomed to be job seekers and not job providers, he said.

Stating that the statistics are sometimes misleading, he said while India is fifth largest economy in terms of GDP, it ranks 142 with a per capita income of only $2,400.

KTR said India and China had almost similar GDPs in the 1980s. Now, China was a 18 trillion dollar economy and India was still languishing at 3.4 trillion dollars. Similarly, Japan, despite its geographical and topographical challenges, is the third largest economy in the world.

He said China managed its aspirations and development goals and ensured that its natural and human resources were put to effective use. He said Japan could achieve amazing growth despite all adversities because of the intellect of its people.

Listing out the rapid strides made by Telangana during the last eight years, especially the growth in GSDP and the per capita income, he claimed that If only the rest of India had performed at par with Telangana, the country would have already become a 4.25 trillion dollar economy.

KTR claimed that Telangana made good use of the natural and human resources and achieved 15 percent CAGR. Telangana's per capita income in 2014 was Rs 1.24 lakh and increased to Rs 2.75 lakh while the national average was Rs 1.49 lakh, he said.

He pointed out that in the last 8.5 years, Telangana issued nearly 22,000 clearances for industries through TS-IPASS and generated 21 lakh direct jobs.

He also explained how Telangana was marching ahead with a fine balance of development and welfare.

"If only the rest of India can work like Telangana and if only the rest of India is led by a leader like KCR, 5 trillion is a joke, we can reach 15 trillion dollars," he said.