Dr Duggaraju Srinivasa Rao
Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, has taken upon himself with a new idea for the uplifting the targeted 21.8 lakh poor families by the year 2009 through a programme named as P 4. It is a novel idea unlike the direct cash transfer welfare schemes implemented by many other states across the country. Such schemes were there in the country for the last 50 odd years and yet the poverty remained as it was. Hence this new P 4 concept, aimed with a facilitator role for the government and no or little funds used from the government treasury, largely funded by the rich strata of the society, the industrialist and corporates and non-resident Andhra people through their benevolence.
The four Ps in the scheme stands for Public, Private, People and Partnership. This unique scheme was conceived, as Chandrababu Naidu claimed, during the Covid lock down time when he was out of power, and now implemented once back in power in the 2024 elections and successfully implement before next election in 2029 to claim for re-election by the voters.
Under P 4 scheme already the below the poverty (BPL) families numbering 21.8 lakh are identified and are labelled as Bangaru (Golden) families. These families may not require the same kind of uplift, so the uniform beneficial intervention is ruled out. The customised intervention responsibility is now entrusted not only to the rich families who volunteer but also to those successful entrepreneurs of this state and people who settled in different countries. All of them mentor the families to come above BPL through education, training, skills, entrepreneurship and also awareness on health. Weaning away the rural folks from the addictions of tobacco and liquor is an undeclared component of P 4 scheme. The high profile mentors are given the choice of adopting a village or a mandal and better the infrastructure of those selected areas. The people are encouraged to pay back to the village, school where they were born and got educated through this P 4 scheme. All may not be in a position to spare their time to be the partners in this new poverty alleviation scheme but they can contribute monetarily. The contributors have the freedom to specify on the areas where their donations should go.
Already in certain areas the philanthropic families started adoption of some of the known BPL families in their towns and villages and the well-known Megha Engineering company owner P. Krishna Reddy has reportedly his own native mandal in the Krishna district of the state. He reportedly pledged a dedicated team to assess the needs of 2,500 BPL families in the area and 45 crore budget to be the part of CM Chandrababu Naidu’s ambitious P 4 scheme. The idea of Chandrababu Naidu is to appeal the corporates and industries to use their CSR funds to P 4 and help the state. This may bear fruit as in turn the new industrial policies to be drafted to help new units to be setup in the state especially in the natural resources rich Rayala Seema districts. The non-resident Andhra youth who occupy influential positions in various countries are also being roped in with already few youth committing to be part of the educational and skill development areas. The IT sector is dominated across the globe by Andhra people and many have them attribute their status in the current world for the IT policy formulated by Chandrababu in undivided Andhra Pradesh. Though the benefits of Hyderabad centric development of IT, pharmacy has gone to Telangana, the Andhra youth hope their favourite leader is sure to replicate that development in the residual Andhra Pradesh with his innovation. The Visakhapatnam is already blooming into a new IT hub in the country and it may soon give competition to both Hyderabad and Bangalore, they feel.
To coordinate this new initiative a special purpose Zero Poverty P 4 foundation is floated to receive and channelize the funds and also co-ordinate the entire work. Undoubtedly it is a very ambitious project and goal of 4 years may be too short to meet the target. Despite the hurdles, criticism from certain sections the proposed P 4 is worth giving a chance. If succeeded the image of Chandrababu as an innovative administrator is likely to revive at the national level.
(Author is retired professor. Views expressed are personal.)
