Full Text of Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s Speech

Honourable Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, his Excellency the Governor of Andhra Pradesh, Rameshwar Thakur, Mr Sunil Munjal, Mr Rajat Gupta, Dean Rammohan Rao, Professor Vishwanadham, all the dignitaries of the dais, ladies and gentlemen.

I feel honoured and privileged to participate in the fifth year celebrations of the Indian School of Business and the Global Logistics Summit here today. At the outset, I extend a very warm and cordial welcome to our beloved Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, who has kindly consented to inaugurate the celebrations and the Summit in spite of his busy schedule. I congratulate the ISB, a distinctive business school founded by a group of successful and internationally recognised industrialists and academicians. I am happy that ISB today can be proud of a distinguished faculty of renowned experts in respective academic disciplines.

The ISB has been a trendsetter right from the start, and within five years has been granted the reputation of being one of the most prestigious business schools in India. The school has made giant strides in every facet, from the performance quality of the graduates to the growth in its class in size, its executive education programmes and acceptability among the academia globally. The ISB is well on its path to achieve global recognition.

Andhra Pradesh is basically an agricultural economy with paddy, groundnuts, coconuts, palm oil, cotton, maize, pulses, chillies etc as primary crops. The food processing industry in Andhra Pradesh is reasonably well developed, but certainly could be improved a lot more. The rural business transformation strategies, presented at this Summit, would certainly be of immense use to the state. As we all have seen, somehow agriculture and allied activities are not growing as fast as they ought to have grown. In fact in the past two and half years, since the government took charge at Delhi ,with Dr Manmohan Singh’s proactive measures to support agriculture, things have taken a reasonably good turn, but lot more will have to be done in this front. The problems for agriculturist are so many and we have seen right in front of our eyes how in some parts of the country, farmers are even committing suicide.

While the country is growing at about 8 or 9% , agriculture and allied activities are growing only at the rate of 2% or even less. Some major initiatives will have to be taken, both at governmental as well as at private participation level. When more than 65% of the people are dependent upon agriculture, and their growth is less than 2%, while the rest of the country is growing at 9% or 8%, I am quite sure that all of us will agree that lot more initiatives need to be taken. This Summit, I am quite sure, will throw a lot of light in achieving our goals. Rural economy needs more of infrastructural development, marketing abilities and a lot more of value added chains.

I only wish and hope that this Summit will show ways wherein the farmers of the country can really take a long stride forward. We are all very keen to hear the Prime Minister whose economic knowledge and inputs are well known, and we are all very sure that, under his able guidance, the country, which, as it is taking big strides, will help the farmers and the farming community to be able to join the main stream. Thank you very much.