Telangana Industries, IT and MAUD Minister KT Rama Rao today interacted with Mayors of Carmel and Indianapolis – cities that made their mark with best practices in local governance. During the interaction with KT Rama Rao at Carmel City Hall, Mayor James Brainard explained how they carry out the functions of drinking water supply, electricity distribution, public transport and sewage management. The two also discussed the public private partnership and other models to raise funds for fuelling the infrastructure projects.
Brainard said citizens extend full cooperation for the development of Carmel City by paying taxes in time and in full. KT Rama Rao then was taken on a tour of City Hall building where the Minister sought to know how the local body’s meetings are held and how citizens are made part of them. He asked IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan to get complete details of City Management Software through which Vehicular Traffic, Water and Electricity Supply are being tracked live in Carmel and to implement smart technologies in the administration. The Minister also examined the mobile app used by Carmel citizens for registering the grievances.
KTR discussed with Joe Hogsett, Mayor of Indianapolis on city planning and administration and the latter elaborated on the Bus Rapid Transit System built to support the expanding city and growing population. The city is raising funds for creating basic infrastructure through Municipal Bonds, Joe said. Later, KTR evinced keen interest in replicating the best practices of the two cities in Hyderabad.
On the second day of the USA visit, Minister KT Rama Rao met leaders of reputed IT, Healthcare companies in Indianapolis. He met CEO of Envista Corporation –a supply chain consulting and IT services company, based out of Indianapolis and offered all support to its expansion plans in Hyderabad. The Minister then met the leadership team of Interactive Intelligence, a global leader of cloud services for customer engagement, communications and collaboration.
The senior functionaries of Interactive Intelligence appreciated the Telangana Government’s proactive approach in solving the power shortage issue in the State. They remarked that Hyderabad’s culture is very warm and welcoming. The company officials also said that people from other cities in the country love to work in Hyderabad. After discussions with the Minister the Interactive Intelligence leadership assured that they would soon be expanding their operations in Hyderabad, Telangana.
Later in the day, Minister met Steve Akard, Chief of Staff, Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) at its office. The IEDC is State of Indiana’s lead economic development agency. KTR and Steve Akard agreed to continue and strengthen the sister city relationship that Hyderabad and Indianapolis currently share. Earlier, Steve gave a high level overview about the various sectors that Indiana is popular for and on how the agency promotes Indiana as an ideal State for investors. The IEDC team explained about how the agency collaborates with various stakeholders and promotes the State. He had an in-depth discussion to understand the various initiatives of IEDC to promote Indiana. Minister was keen to explore possibilities of investments in the Medical Devices sector and explained threadbare about the various initiatives Telangana government is taking to improve the ease of doing business ranking of the State. (NSS)