The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Preparing a vision for 2025

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 06, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Preparing a vision for 2025

Staff Reporter

Collector calls for solutions to some of the immediate issues

— Photo: K. Ananthan

For COIMBATORE: Collector Neeraj Mittal (centre) speaking at the launch of the ‘CII TN Vision 2025’ for Coimbatore on Friday. The Confederation of Indian Industry, Coimbatore Zone, chairman, K.Thangaraj (right), and vice-chairman, C.N.Ashok, are in the picture.

COIMBATORE: Imagine Coimbatore free of slums, having a green cover area for its citizens to relax, extensive recreational facilities, such as trekking and camping, in place and strong infrastructure supporting it.

Envision a city that has strengthened its roadways to meet the growing vehicular population and where Information Technology has reached out to the rural areas in terms of employment generation too.

These are some of the goals that the district can try to achieve, said Collector Neeraj Mittal.

Speaking at a meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry here on Friday to kick-start the preparation of “Tamil Nadu Vision 2025”, the Collector called for solutions to some of the immediate issues and long term objectives for the district that would be achievable.

“The development path for the district should be inclusive,” he said. The district had its core competency in entrepreneurship, education, tourism, strong manufacturing base, emerging Information Technology sector and non-Governmental organisations. Development of the city should be sustainable. There could be a number of specific goals and the vision plan should be actionable, he emphasised.

The CII’s local chapter chairman, K. Thangaraj, said preparation of the vision document “is to outline what we want to be in future, and set goals accordingly and address the gaps.”

Representatives of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, consultant for the CII in this exercise, said the core theme of the vision document would be competitive, inclusive, innovative and sustainable development.

Goals

Some of the goals were to have a balanced regional and social development, strong core infrastructure, good governance and high industrial competitiveness. The enablers for these goals included education, health, e-governance, culture and State finance.

The exercise would be completed in six phases – analytical synthesis, collecting ideas, integration of these two, formulation of a vision, refining the document and final document.

Broadly, the vision would have three core themes for the Government to focus, three thrust areas for the industry and a common theme.

Zonal groups (such as those in Coimbatore, Madurai and Tiruchi regions), discussion panels (of experts), the core group and the advisory panel formed would help in bringing out the vision document, they said.

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