Economy is taking back seat, politics is taking centre stage: KTR

HYDERABAD: Telangana Information Technology Minister K T Rama Rao, a big fan of stand-up comedy, appeared on the show of prominent stand-up comedian Kunal Kamara, 'Shut Up Kunal'.

In this interview, KTR, who is known for breaking the stereotype of a regular politician, spoke candidly with Kunal Kamara about how he entered politics 17 years ago when his father, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, was leading Telangana at the time and resigned from his parliament membership. 

KTR has since joined him without even notifying him to do his part and support him in his re-election campaign. This is how Telangana's IT Minister, K. T. Rama Rao, fondly known as KTR, began his political career.

"I was really lucky to see India from both sides. How the world sees India versus how India sees the rest of the world," he said.   KTR believes politics helped him get to know different groups of people.

"It's really amazing that the people I see every day are involved in politics, as I recently attended the World Economic Forum in Davos and met many of the leaders of the biotech industry. It's great to meet different people everyday," says KTR.

KTR criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's drastic demonization step as a disaster, stating it was a disaster for the country, by the most inefficient prime minister in the country. 

He promised to take back all the black money and also promised to give Rs.15,00,000  to everyone. "I just wonder where all the money has gone? He even said he would control terrorism through demonization because counterfeit money fosters terrorism in the country. He even said that he should be burned if no good results were obtained within 50 days of demonitisation. It's quite evident demonitisation has not yielded positive results for sure," he added.

KTR further said that the Telangana government completed the world's largest project, the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project, within four years, but Prime Minister did not talk about it. As a matter of fact, Kaleshwaram lift Irrigation project was the world's largest lift irrigation project and was completed by the youngest state. And, it was by no means a small feat. Prime Minister Modi talked about vocal for locals, but he never admitted that Telangana successfully completed such a huge project all alone.

"In my opinion, ideally, we should spend six months working on politics and the rest of the time focusing on the economy. Because a good economy is usually good politics. Unfortunately, the economy has now taken a back seat and politics has taken over. The Prime Minister doesn't have to admit it, but it's been 75 years since we became independent, but why don't other states think like this? They do not think about providing people with clean drinking water and proper health infrastructure. Telangana has established state medical colleges in each district and Telangana is building Rs.26,000 state schools at 7,300 crore in a very short span," said KTR.

According to the minister, Telangana is only 2.5 percent of India's population but contributes 5% contibrutes of GDP, thus this is what Telangana is doing. Our per capita income used to be Rs 1.24 lakh, but it is now Rs 2.78 lakh, the highest in the country. "Our Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) was Rs 5 lakh crore in 2015, and it is now Rs 11.55 lakh crore.  Even if we had received only a small amount of assistance from the Centre, it would have been Rs 14 lakh crore now."