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State misses (v)room boom, faces doom

Saye Sekhar | January 9, 2012 | 0 Comments

When the grandiose Auto Expo was unveiled on January 5 at Pragathi Maidan in New Delhi, Andhra Pradesh was deeply engrossed in its own internecine feuds.

The State virtually had no role to play at the Auto Expo. And, there is hardly any semblance of anybody being bothered about it, leave alone envisaging one.

On 23 March, 2011, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy told a ‘secret’ to his subjects — people of the State who did not elect him to the post. A car company had evinced interest in setting up a Rs.6,000-crore manufacturing unit in AP.

He chose the ground-breaking ceremony of Mahindra & Mahindra’s tractor unit at Zaheerabad in Medak district as the forum to drop this hint on the car project, hurtling past all hurdles, was arriving, at last. He also went on to announce that the car company would communicate its decision on the setting up of the unit in June. “Till then, let it be a suspense,” he said then.

But typical of a politician that he is, Kiran did not disclose June of which year it would be. So, the secret remained as it is and even forgotten. Though I still wish it should finally bear fruit one day, I could not verify as to which was the company that acted furtive with the Chief Minister. So, who has taken whom for a ride is anybody’s guess.

Kiran is not the first one. His predecessors Chandrababu Naidu and YS Rajasekhara Reddy too meddled with the automobile industry that never considered Andhra Pradesh as a home to any of their manufacturing units.

Do you remember Vashishta Wahan? The abbreviated from of this ‘special purpose vehicle’ — VW — is exactly resembling the world famous Volkswagen. It was floated to facilitate the establishment of Volkswagen. Nobody now has a clue as to where the then India head of Volkswagen Helmut Schuster is. But the brains behind the VW are now masquerading as paragons of virtue preaching homilies at the drop of the hat. The CBI probe was just the proverbial last straw that gave ‘clean chit’ to the suspects. The vehicle did not come to AP, but the ‘special purpose’ of Vashishta Wahan was served. The billion dollar project skidded off the State and moved to Chakan.

When Ratan Tata’s dream project of Nano hit a roadblock at Singur in West Bengal, YSR tried his best to impress the Tata Sons with sops. Recall the Lady Macbeth muttering: “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” It was that sense of déjà vu that gripped the powers that be. At least, YSR appeared to me so, even as his cronies shamelessly dusted their rumps.

The State could not pitch its case with an effaced credibility with Tata and Narendra Modi gave them not only the land, but even the moral chassis required to rollout a car factory. Then the Government sanctioned 225 acres to MLR Cars, a home-grown auto-rickshaw maker M Lokeswara Rao, at Tupran in Medak district. He had tied up several things including intellectual property rights and power train and paint shop technologies. But the project remained a non-starter even after four years of its journey on a bumpy road.

The latest attempt to rope in Peugeot when Kanna Lakshminarayana was Industries Minister too crashed with the company swerving away from the State.

Chandrababu Naidu too fancied a car project and invited Proton Edar of Malaysia, to roll into Andhra Pradesh. Caparo group’s bus body building unit at Naidupet in Nellore district too stopped in its tracks, thanks to recession in 2009.

Whether one believes in clairvoyants and soothsayers or not, I feel the State doesn’t have the ‘vahana yogam’ (to have an automobile manufacturing unit) in its horoscope.

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