Boston Telugu Community organized a seminar and discussion on “60 years of Indian Independence and NRIs role in India’s development” to mark the 60 years of India’s Independence day on September 1, 2007 at the historic city of Lexington, Massachusetts. Honorable AP Legislative Assembly Speaker KR Suresh Reddy was the Chief Guest and the meeting was attended by over 100 people including Vemur MLA Satish Paul Raj.

While delivering the key note speech, Speaker Suresh Reddy conveyed to the audience that India has made a lot of progress during the 60 years of Independence that all Indians can be proud of. However, there is a lot, we as a nation need to achieve to create inclusive growth where all sections of population are benefited from the new economic opportunities. Referring to current Andhra Pradesh state government, he emphasized that there is an increased importance to Agriculture, Infrastructure and Health Care. He indicated that 50% of the plan outlay has been ear marked for the irrigation projects alone. However, the government is ensuring that the importance of Information Technology is not diluted and in fact the government is aggressively pursuing the new opportunities for growth and investments in this area. He said, Hyderabad continues to be a most favorable destination for multinational companies and is experiencing much higher than the national average growth in Information Technology.

He also mentioned some of the innovative ideas he has introduced in the state assembly; such as telecasting the assembly proceedings online and recruiting MBA graduates to provide professional assistance to each MLA. The MBA graduates will bring their business and professional management practices into public policy making and implementation.

As part of the question and answer hour, he stressed the importance of evolving nature of parliamentary democracy and resulting self corrective system. Taking questions, he also reminded audience that the need of NRIs involvement in local and government projects: he appealed to NRIs to do their part in nation building by contributing their efforts in the areas of Rural Development, Education, and Health-Care. He took advise/comments from NRI Doctors to improve basic health care system. He assured NRIs that Government is thriving to provide safe drinking water and asked retired NRIs to spend their quality time in their native places. Referring to Government’s efforts on Secondary Education, he quoted Winston Churchill’s “Knowledge Worker is an Asset”.

Answering question about his stand on Telangana: he mentioned that he is one of the Congress Telangana leaders who signed the memorandum, waiting for high command’s decision. Quote: “I am not wavering; I am doing my best efforts to allocate lion-share of projects/funds for Telangana area development. He also assured Telangana community members that he would take up the matter with appropriate people about Government observing Sept 17^th as “Telangana Liberation Day”.

Earlier, the seminar was kicked off with the welcome address by Amar Karmilla and was followed by the National Anthem. The audience observed two minute silence to pay the condolences to the victims of recent bombings in Hyderabad. Venkat Maroju introduced the speaker and Rayadas Manthena acted as the Master of Ceremony. Rajendar Kalvala submitted the vote of thanks.

Some of the prominent Bostonians attended the meeting include Papa Rao Gundavarm, Suresh Gottimukkula, Ramakrishna Sudhireddy, TAGB president Srinivas Kaki, Shanti Putta, Mohan Nannapaneni,Parmesh Bheemreddy, Venkanna. Indian Muslim Council was represented by Tanvir, Seema and Dr. Jaffer

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