Power, water lines will run under footpaths: KT Rama Rao

Hyderabad: IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Thursday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have taken all Chief Ministers into confidence and ahead of the demonetisation of high-value currency.

He said the decision would help in the long run but it could have been better executed. “Because of poor implementation, the people are feeling the pinch,”  he said. The minister also questioned the silence of Reserve Bank of India's Governor on demonetisation, and said India was growing at a fast pace and experiments with the economy might affect growth.

The minister was speaking at an event, “Transforming Telangana” conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry — Young Indians. Mr Rao detailed how the state, ranked 13 seven months ago, had topped the Ease of Business ranking. He said it was a culmination of 58 new government orders, 121 circulars, 26 legislations and more than 66 meetings with industrial and worker bodies. He said the single window clearance of TS-iPass generated Rs 50,000 crore worth of investments and 1.5 lakh jobs.

Mr Rao spoke of the infrastructural developments that Hyderabad needed. He referred to the lack of footpaths, saying only 350 km of 9,000 km of roads had footpaths. He said the government was working on laying footpaths with electricity and water lines passing underneath. This would cost Rs 10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh per kilometre. Roads would be white topped at a cost of about Rs 50 lakh per lane kilometre.

He said the Metro Rail would start operating in early 2017. He said traffic junctions, bus shelters, urban landscape, sanitation and reduction of open garbage dumps were high on the agenda.

Tech incubator set up at IIIt-Basar

The first rural startup incubator in Telangana was inaugurated at Basar, the first digital literate village in the state, on Thursday. The Telangana Inno-vation and Incubation Centre was jointly launched by T-Hub, the startup incubator, and Telangana IT Association.

The centre has been set up in the premises of the IIIT-Basar campus. Vice-chancellor Sirasani Sathyanara-yana and TITA president Sundeep Kumar Mukthala inaugurated the centre.

Mr Mukthala said, “TIIC will support students of IIIT and youth around the village to transform their potential ideas into startups. It will support them in the form of mentoring, funding, ideation, and knowledge.”

He said the Japan-based SafeTraceHub, multimedia firm Prism Multimedia and US-based Adsidious were interested in extending services to the TIIC.