Atal Bihari Vajpayee
If the promise made by the Prime Minister of India to the nation is anything to go by, then India is definitely on its road to progress. The ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ road network under the National Highway Development project, being executed by NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) is one of the most ambitious highway development of the country. The project involves building international standard roads allowing uninterrupted traffic flow, with divided carriageways and service roads, grade separators, over bridges, underpasses, bypasses, wayside amenities and enhanced safety features. The Golden quadrilateral, East West-NorthSouth Corridor and other projects under NHAI amount to approximately 150 separate contracts out of which 50-60 contracts have already been awarded. The project was initiated in January 1999 and has received a major thrust in year 2001 due to which 70% of the work is already under implementation, despite the fact that it takes upto two years to complete the ground work before actual execution. This project has given a new lease of life to the surveying and mapping industry in India.
Chandra Babu Naidu
Andhra Pradesh’s story has not been any less glorious. Software exports from the state amounted to a meagre Rs 60 crore when Naidu took over in 1995. The exports crossed Rs 2,007 crore in 2000-2001. This fiscal, it is likely to be in the region of Rs 2,600 crore.
In Andhra Pradesh, IT has already reached public spaces that other states can only dream of. It is now at the door step of common man with introduction of e-seva. Land registration, issue of birth and death certificates, payment of bills have been made hassle-free through this and among other things Naidu hopes it will reduce corruption. Having come to power earlier, Naidu had a headstart in infrastructure. His achievements in the development of infrastructure such as roads and flyovers are near legendary. For the third consecutive year, Hyderabad received HUDCO’s cleanest city award. Given this, no IT investor can ignore Hyderabad’s claims to better and bigger investments. And there are no signs of saturation. The space is only getting bigger, better and easier.
Pramod Mahajan
As the first minister for information technology, Pramod Mahajan wants to make government more responsive to the needs of the IT sector. In the year 2001 IT minister Pramod Mahajan brought in critical reforms for the sector. He introduce Internet telephony and secondly he merged computers and telecommunication ministries. He is also responsible for bringing Media Lab Asia, Cambridge USA to India.
S M Krishna
Software exports from Karnataka in fiscal 2001 reached Rs 7,475 crore against the targeted Rs 6,400 crore, representing a whopping jump by 72 per cent over the previous year, where as in 1998-99, software exports from Karnataka were a mere Rs 3,200 crore. He is one chief minister who has understood Karnataka’s potential and is tapping it with great results. The Krishna’s government is the first in the Asia-Pacific region to have declared Karnataka’s goal of becoming a “zero piracy state”, an announcement that has warmed many a software organisation affected by this scourge. It has issued an order making it mandatory for all its departments to use genuine software and laying down a detailed process for checking the use of legal software within the government.
