Naidu Wants Officers To Get Smart Officers By 2020

SMART ( simple, moral, acco- untable, responsive and transparent) is the key word coined by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu for guidance, as the bureaucracy in Andhra Pradesh braces to prepare the Vision document that will enable this southern state to surpass the East Asian tigers in economic development by the year 2020.

Task forces composed of senior bureaucrats and experts have been set up to draft Vision 2020 by the end of January 1998.

In a day-long interaction with these groups on Saturday, Naidu said Vision 2020 should aim at making Andhra Pradesh the leading entity in the Asia Pacific region in terms of quality of life of the people, per capita income and economic opportunities, adopting international benchmarks.

He asked the task forces to take their cue from the management in successful corporate houses which spend 30 to 50 percent of their time making strategies about the future. He said that such a culture was missing in the government. Naidu said that the task force members should visit the fast growing states within the country, and also the East Asian nations to study the strategy adopted by them, and come out with Vision documents that could be implemented. I will bring about the necessary psychological change and motivation among the people, he assured.

Besides senior ministers and state officials, Prof Palepu Krishna and Dr Srinivasa Reddy from University of Harvard, and N Bhasker Rao from the National Institute for Developmental Studies participated in the discussions.