Newindpress

Bangalore, Jul 25: A vision had been shown, but Karnataka preferred to remain blind. As President APJ Abdul Kalam lays down his office on Wednesday, the State has ignored his roadmap to eliminate poverty and unemployment, enhance the quality of life and take the State on a journey to progress and prosperity.

During his address to members of both the Houses of Karnataka Legislature on November 20, 2005, Kalam presented a ‘Vision Document’ to put the State on a ‘mission mode’. He also outlined eleven engines of growth.

But the road remains unravelled; none drove the engines of growth and, most importantly, even the sparkplug provided by the author of ‘Igniting Minds’ remained unignited.

President Kalam's mission for Karnataka had just 11 components: textile, energy, horticulture, agro-processing, water management, tourism, training of para-medics, creation of industries for knowledge products, grid connectivity for sustainable growth, PURA (providing urban amenities to rural areas) and putting in place development facilitators.

When Kalam addressed the legislature, the government was headed by Dharam Singh, who gave no thought to implementing the President's mission. A two-day special legislature session held on March 16 and 17 last year to discuss Kalam's mission was futile. Considerable time was utilised by the treasury and Opposition members only to criticise each other.

The session concluded with Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy's statement that the “government is committed to implementing the mission” - one more promise from the ‘promising’ CM. The only outcome of the special session was to add to the daily allowances and travel expenses of the legislators.

Twenty months have lapsed after Kalam outlined the mission for Karnataka. The blueprint still remains only on paper. This website's newspaper correspondent's efforts to trace its implementation were futile. Every senior official who was contacted passed on the buck.

Even the Chief Secretary's secretariat had no knowledge about its implementation. One thing was very clear -- that there has been a total lack of seriousness in implementing Kalam's mission.

Not even a coordination committee to implement it (as is normally set up when governments shelve good projects) exists. Heads of the departments concerned are not in a position to say anything about the status of the mission's implementation.

Chief Secretary P B Mahishi, who is supposed to act on the government's commitment to implement the mission if not implement the mission, was not available for comments as he was busy with the ongoing legislature session.

However, his secretariat staff was helpful in guiding this correspondent to contact GCR Subramanya, Principal Secretary (Administrative Reforms), in the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR). Subramanyam in turn suggested that Geetha Ramesh, deputy secretary (DPAR) be contacted as he was new to the post.

Geetha also expressed her helplessness as she was also new to the post. However, she was kind enough to tell this website's newspaper correspondent that such important issues were dealt by the Chief Secretary himself. So it was back to square one.

Officials manning the Chief Secretary's office advised to get in touch with the Planning Department. The personal assistant to the Principal Secretary (Planning), Lakshmi Venkatachalam, asked this website's newspaper correspondent to contact Raghuram Reddy, Director of District Planning Division, who in turn maintained that he had nothing to do with President's mission.

Then came another advice to contact the State Planning Board (SPB). When contacted, the SPB Deputy Chairman Dr A Ravindra, himself a former Chief Secretary, stated that the SPB had nothing to do with the implementation of President Kalam's eleven-point mission for Karnataka's growth.

“But the SPB would certainly incorporate the programmes suggested by Dr Kalam in its vision document,” Ravindra said, adding that Kalam's mission pertained to different departments and, as such, it may have been referred to them for necessary action.