BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh government is leaving no stone unturned in a bid to attract investors as it seeks to become India’s premier industrial hub. The state is also revamping policies to facilitate ease of doing business (EoDB) and even bring cost of doing business lower for large companies. In an interaction with The Bureaucrat, Madhya Pradesh government Chief Secretary Anuraj Jain, a 1989-batch IAS officer talks on new and upcoming policies, farmers welfare, investment opportunities, and more. Edited excerpts.  

Madhya Pradesh has been offering loans to farmers in the form of subsidy. Share insights into it?

Farmer is not paying any amount, but the repayment is being done. If a farmer takes a loan on the government account, his loan limits get choked. So, there is a tripartite agreement, where farmer will take the loan, but the repayment of the loan by the farmer will be done through the subsidy. So, this is how we have structured the financials.

The state government holds multiple business and investors summit. What’s the core objective of having such?

The key objective is to increase the share of industrial output in our GDP. Madhya Pradesh has done remarkably well in the agriculture sector. In the last 15-16 years, the area under irrigation is multiplied by 6 times from about 7.5 lakh hectare; it has become 46 lakh hectare. It has been a remarkable success story. On the infrastructure side, we have done well, like we have a 24x7 electricity for the last 12 years now. Roads have improved tremendously.

But one area we need to do well is to take the industrialization deeper. Our certain areas like Indore, and to some extent Bhopal are doing well. Even certain parts in Gwalior and Jabalpur are doing well but still the share of manufacturing in our GDP is less than the national average. So we need to focus. If you want to increase the productivity per person, you need to add manufacturing and services. But manufacturing is what we need to do. So, for this industrial growth, for which a lot of things have already been done in the last 10 years, they have started getting some results. But we want to attract industries with a renewed vigour.

So, you are looking at distribution of industries or balanced development across state?

Yes. We are looking at a balanced development. This balanced development means earlier the industries would congregate in Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur and Gwalior regions, and that should change. We have seven regional summits. So, they have been very good. Even micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) come out. We are able to talk to them, connect with them, and sort of motivated them for investments. Our CM personally has taken a lot of interest in these regional summits. And they have started getting results.

Are you coming up with new policies to attract investors especially in the area of ease of doing business (EoDB)?

Since, there are new sectors; we are looking at bringing in new policies and also amending the existing policies. So, we are targeting 25 policies in 2025. Some will be revamped; others will be new. And this is only to attract the industries and global investors.

Can you name a few?

We have a policy on Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics and Extended Reality (MP AVGC-XR) and Global Capacity Centre or GCC policy. They were recently approved by the Cabinet. So, we have already started these two.

We are coming out with a very innovative policy for attracting private capital and the private sector efficiencies for improving the forest cover. We are trying to attract private sector capital and efficiencies to our degraded forest. Madhya Pradesh has one of the biggest forest covered areas in the country. So, the forest cover in terms of the density will start improving.

Then we will be looking at the investment policy. Food processing and textile sectors are also important in addition to minerals. IT (Information Technology) is the sunrise sectors which are coming in. The renewable energy manufacturing that has already been a game changer.

Is the state looking at special zones or parks?

We started a park in Narmadapuram division called Babai Mohasa. So, already 24 companies have come and broken ground there. It is based on competition organised by the Central government, and we had offered certain benefits. We have got Mitra Park sanctioned now. So that will come in Dhar. We have put a medical devices park. We have got a plastic park. We have come out with MSME policies in a manner that MSMEs will get incentive almost everywhere. There are areas where you don't have sufficient industries or there is no representation of the industry. So, there will be special incentives for people to go to those areas.

So, why will an investor come to Madhya Pradesh? States like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu also offer similar incentives?

These incentives are important, but they are not the real point. One of the important factors, is ease of doing business. What is more important is creating ease of doing business. Madhya Pradesh has consistently been one of the top 5-6 states in ease of doing business. But now we are going much more ahead of that like certain deemed permission clauses will come that includes development of infrastructure, curation of these parks with pre-approved environmental clearance.

Now, more importantly what we are coming out is the policy will have a provision for housing for employees. In those parks, it will be permissible to live like if you don't have a hazardous industry sitting in that park. Workers can easily commute to save on time. So, we will allow public private partnership (PPP) projects to be set up there. We will allow industries to set up if they are above a certain size. So, allow them to set up their own dormitories on rental basis like what Apple Inc., has done. So, all this actually reduces the cost of doing business and more importantly improve the speed of doing business.

These kinds of things will find a place in the policy. Then we will have country policies also. We have said that if a certain number of industries come from a particular country and they want to set up their industrial park. We will allow that kind of development and we will give infrastructure support for that. So, suppose people from Taiwan come up, people from Japan come up. But these are the kind of provisions we are working with.

How is state using technology in transforming governance and digitisation of various departments specially related to citizen services?

Madhya Pradesh is already very good with the citizen services. Almost every service is already digitised. And now we are also doing this internally. So, first thing in our system is that we want to make e-file system, a paperless system. We have already completed it for the secretariat. Things have started moving and probably by the end of this month you will not have a single physical file. Then we will go to headquarters and districts and make it 100% from top to bottom.

Do you have any target timeline for this?

We are targeting in next 3 months we should be able to complete it right up to the district level. But already lot of things are already computerized like our court management system and digitisation of land records. Some 11-12 states have got their computer records digitized. So, Madhya Pradesh is also one of them.

You were at the helm of ambitious schemes like Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and PM Gati Shakti, so what were your learning from those schemes and how you are using that experience in the state of Madhya Pradesh as these schemes connect with the citizens?

Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana has been one of the most transformational schemes because the way 100% coverage has been created platform for the direct benefit transfer, so which almost completely weeded out the corruption part of it in the beneficiary oriented schemes, brought in a lot of transparency and governance improvements.

First of all, for any good scheme, it needs the support of the top leadership, the micro planning of the scheme has to be extremely good, so that the one can sort of try to visualize the implementation part, the use of technology, the communication strategy and the teamwork. Similarly, PM Gati Shakti created a technology for the government functioning which broke down the silos of departments and the real time information or the latest available information of a department would become available to another department which is at the planning stage.

In Madhya Pradesh, we have gone one more step, DBT basically ensures you have Aadhaar, you have bank account, but we are coming out with a family ID called Samagra ID. It is already in place, but there are duplications, so we have to do that through E-KYC, to discourage duplication, ensuring that the total correspondence with the family comes out very clear.