Telugu360 — A day with Nara Lokesh, IT Minister of AP

(Krishna)

Served on a silver platter with the ministerial post, we often tend to wonder if Nara Lokesh is living up to the opportunity he is blessed with. He has been often cited in news pitching Andhra Pradesh to Foreign investors and closing some marquee deals for the state. Even though AP CM Chandrababu Naidu is key to bring investors, Lokesh has been at the forefront in closing the deals. Telugu360 reached out to IT, Panchayat Raj and Rural Development minister of Andhra Pradesh to cover a day of his life as Minister. At various instances, the writer was amazed by the minister’s effortlessness who by the end of the day ensured to erase some of the false impressions.

Here is how it went ….

Jan 07th 2019 

8:00 AM

Even though official activities start at 8:30 AM, there is a steady stream of visitors and leaders waiting to speak to Lokesh. He was downstairs at 8 AM and started taking appointments.

8:30 AM:

Vijayawada MP Kesineni Nani, Devineni Avinash and a host of other TDP leaders accompany the young scion of TDP on his first trip of the day to Tiruvur (Krishna district). The minister was given a rousing welcome by local party leaders and cadre as soon as the convoy entered the constituency. Lokesh made sure to get off his car and garland the statues of the founder of TDP and his grandfather – NTR – all along the way. Anna canteen inauguration is his first official programme of the day. Anna canteen is a very successful subsidized food programmed launched by the TDP government. Run by ‘Akshaya Patra’ foundation, ‘Anna Canteens’ offer breakfast, lunch and dinner at Rs. 5. A tremendous reception was organized by TDP cadre in Tiruvur with the loudspeakers blaring ‘Kadali randi Telugu desa karyakarthalara‘ – a popular party song that is a hit with the people. After Anna canteen, minister was off to inaugurate roads and new houses in ‘Mustikuntla’ village in Tiruvur mandal.

11:00 AM:

To our surprise, the packed schedule has been running ON TIME so far. Next programme is “Janma Bhoomi Maa Vooru”, a brainchild of his father Nara Chandrababu Naidu. The programme aims at creating large scale awareness about government schemes and initiatives and make sure they reach deserving beneficiaries.

Mustikunta, a small hamlet in Tiruvooru constituency, saw a very good crowd of around 5000 people. After local leaders and MLA hopeful Nallagatla Swamidas talked about various initiatives and injustices done by the BJP government, it was the turn of Lokesh. Just a background, on this day central BJP directly criticized Lokesh that CBN was getting his son to rise. In a speech that lasted for 45 min, Lokesh started with ‘Krishna Jilla Manavanni, Jilla Alludini“, first part was dedicated to enlisting the successes of TDP government and all the different programmes. There was very good response from the crowd when Lokesh talked about DWCRA and pensions. (Later pensions were increased further to Rs 2000). Then Lokesh took Modi and Jagan to task with his sharp words. There was a very good response from the crowd when Lokesh mentioned about Jagan – Ambulance story and Kotikatthi story. This made audience split into laughter and honestly this writer was surprised with the response the young TDP leader drew from the crowd. Overall it was a very successful visit and a local leader told this writer that local YSRCP MLA never came to the village in last 4.5 years and TDP has a good chance to grab this seat if the right candidate was picked. The convoy heads to CM’s residence by 4 PM and the team starts preparing for the big event of the day.

This writer has interacted with other top politicians of Telugu states, and one main difference with Lokesh is that he takes feedback very positively. On the way from CM’s residence to Gannavaram airport, this writer passed on the feedback regarding DWCRA groups and inefficiency at lower levels of some government programs and Lokesh took it very positively.

Tony Blair , Ex-UK president visit to Amaravati

After a program in rural area, the gears were shifted to a full-fledged corporate event. Tony Blair, Ex-Prime minister of UK was visiting Amaravati and there were a lot of arrangements made. Lokesh narrated how he conspired this to happen. During his recent visit to Dubai, Lokesh gave a presentation about Real time Governance (RTG) to Tony Blair among others. Blair was surprised at the amount of data AP Government was capturing and keen to know more. The government invited Blair to AP, Lokesh gleefully told this writer.

Tony Blair lands in a private jet and Lokesh, Kesineni Nani and bureaucrats gave him a warm welcome. Then the convoy heads to Secretariat in Velagapudi.

7:00 PM

This is the first time this writer visited “temporary” secretariat. First impression is the word “temporary’ is a misnomer. Once you go inside of Secretariat, it looks like a swanky global corporate office with white day light, unique furnishings.

Real time governance:

After seeing the amount of data that AP government is capturing to enable better performance, Tony Blair was awe struck. And this is not a ‘graphic’ or a ‘presentation’. This is a real system that is working today. An example of RTG is — there are weather censors set up across the state and Andhra’s RTG system was able to predict recent cyclones a good 12 hours ahead of the national weather agency and enabled the state to act quickly. Similarly, there are sensors that give current status of ground water and if levels are reducing the system gives the nearest source of supply.

“I think it is one of the most exciting things happening anywhere in the world. You’re (Chandrababu) leading a revolution on how to govern. It is an extraordinary undertaking in a state, which is the size of a reasonably large European country. There are lessons from Andhra Pradesh for the globe,” Tony Blair told the gathering after the tour, which lasted for around an hour. This writer was stationed very closely to Tony Blair and he was genuinely impressed by RTG and at multiple places he interrupted and asked ‘How were you able to build all this software in such a short time?’

Titbits:

• A group of school girls gave a dance performance on a mini stage set up outside the main venue at Janma Bhoomi program.. When the children jostled amidst the crowd to get photographed with Lokesh, the organisers sent them back to the seating area in their own stern ways. Learning about this, Lokesh called them over to the stage with a warm smile, asked his photographer to take pictures and instructed him to give them to the children, much to their delight.
• Lokesh had earlier suffered a mini fracture on his right hand while shaking hands with enthusiastic members of the crowd when the convoy was in motion. But he remains unfazed. Almost at every village, he stands on the footrest of his Safari and continues to shake hands so as not to disappoint the people gathered from far and wide.
• Just after the event, in an informal meeting, Chandrababu was talking to a director of Tony Blair Institute. Chandrababu, much like a techie, was having detailed conversations on Data centers and AI. When the other person told he has some contacts, Chandrababu was just as curious to know about them and requested him to connect to those people.

We realized the tremendous amount of planning and the number of people that work in the background 16-18 hours a day to make a minister’s day successful.

• Chaitanya, Lokesh’s PRO, co-ordinates all his schedules to perfection and post publicity of the event. Almost all the time, images are sent to Minister’s WhatsApp group within minutes of the event
• OSDs Srinivas and Kiran do a lot of background work to make the minister’s day successful. They do most of the research before-hand and give necessary information to the minister.

Towards the end of the day, the writer hoped that historians will be more appreciative of Lokesh than the opposition parties and certain sections of media are, for he is able to not just live up to but exceed the expectations placed on him.