Union Minister for Civil Aviation and Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu was in the state over the last few days and on Monday made all the right noises when it comes to leveraging the synergies of the two departments under his care to the advantage of Goa.
Prabhu on Monday said Goa would be made the national capital of Startups and would be marketed globally in association with foreign airlines.
Essentially, in Prabhu’s mind, he would help attract venture capital to Goa by promising them better connectivity and promising the airlines good business because of Goa being the startup capital of India and an investment destination.
The World Bank, international finance corporations and the global venture capitalists would be called to Goa and have a roundtable to assess how to nurture the ecosystem for the startups in the country, Prabhu said while also saying that he would market Goa globally to foreign airlines both from a business as well as a tourism point of view.
This all makes for great sound bites and on paper is a great grand plan.
However, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If one recalls, Prabhu began as Minister for Railways with much promise and while his successor will reap the benefits of what he has sown, Prabhu will ultimately be remembered as a railways minister who promised much but delivered little. He was replaced by Piyush Goyal before he could see through many of the projects he promised.
The plans he has spoken about are arguably much more difficult to achieve than those of the railways especially given the number of variables involved.
In the railways the issue was about government spending, here the role is to attract private investment, which is a far more challenging task. Nonetheless, this isn’t to write Suresh Prabhu and his plans off, but one cannot escape the fact that his plans do appear fanciful for the moment.
That being the government needs to get its act together and focus on small steps towards a big prize. Priority for the government should be to get going on the Tuem Manufacturing Cluster and the Chimbel IT Park which, lest you forget were promised by the previous government and nearly two years later are no closer to a conclusion than they were then.
The startup policy too does not have too many takers and after the initial spurt, which incidentally happened before the government could react to the startup culture, is now fading and the lure of Goa as a startup destination was not as bright as it once seemed. However, all is not lost. We’d rather something happened than nothing.
