CII sends 'feel-good' message to industry

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, JULY 13. The chief executive officers of most of the top industrial organisations in the country were here to attend the national council meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) today.

They took an hour off their national agenda, to focus on Tamil Nadu to try and establish a new equation between the State chapter of the CII and the State Government under Ms. Jayalalithaa.

The Chief Minister was invited to participate in an `inter-active session' with the council this afternoon and she not only addressed them but took their suggestions and fielded a few questions.

The CII's national president, Mr. Sanjiv Goenka, had a few suggestions. Now that the State was formulating a new industrial policy, he wanted a separate focus for the manufacturing sector, so that it would not be neglected.

Offering a `partnership' with the Tamil Nadu Government, he called for the setting up of a joint task force, in addition to closer cooperation and `working together' in the agriculture sector. He even suggested institutionalising the cooperation.

The need for `e-governance' to ensure an efficient administration and the urgency of power sector reforms were the other `crucial' issues Mr. Goenka raised with the Chief Minister.

Mr. S. Mahalingam, Southern Regional chairman, wanted the Government to make Chennai as recognised as were Bangalore and Hyderabad in the IT and software sector. Communication infrastructure, particularly broad bandwidth were imperative to provide a push to this sector.

The captains of industry told Ms. Jayalalithaa that `perceptions' played a major role in channelling investments into the State. Improving law and order, containing corruption, privatisation of rural health care, ensuring better air connectivity and encouraging the learning of foreign languages to provide entry for IT firms and professionals to Germany, France and Japan were some of the suggestions. Mr. Arun Bharat Ram, immediate past president, spoke of his visit to China with a delegation, and said it was time the State Governments brought pressure on the Centre to come up with much-needed labour reforms.

Mr. Rahul Bajaj said politics and economy should go together and political expediency should not come in the way of the governments taking the right decisions. He urged the Chief Minister to improve the outsiders' perception of law and order in the State, and take steps to contain corruption, which was a problem at the national and international levels too.

Welcoming the Chief Minister's interaction and some of her policy measures unveiled today, the CII said it had sent a ``feel good'' message to industry, from which Tamil Nadu could benefit. The members did not fail to notice Ms. Jayalalithaa's commitment to ``reforms with a human face''.

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