N Chandrababu Naidu
Systems Builder Behind
Viksit Andhra Pradesh

Sameer Kochhar
Reforms Historian and
Chairman, SKOCH Group

In a country where governance is too often reduced to announcements, optics, and short-term schemes, Chandrababu Naidu stands apart. Over the past two decades, I have met countless chief ministers, policy advisors, and ministers across India. But very few have left the impression that Naidu has. He is not merely a politician. He is a systems thinker. A leader who understands that delivery is architecture, and transformation is impossible without well-designed feedback loops, institutions, and accountability.

I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Mr. Naidu for an extended conversation. What struck me immediately was not just his clarity of thought, but the conviction with which he approaches governance. His memory is sharp, his command over numbers is clinical, and his gaze is fixed not on the next quarter or election cycle, but on 2047.

He reminded me that back in the early 1980s, when public sector dominance was still the norm, he engaged with Wipro to introduce performance appraisal in government. It was a small beginning, he said, but it marked a shift in mindset. Later, in 1993-94, he brought in 2MBPS connectivity via BSNL to facilitate teleconferencing within the government. At the time, this was nothing short of revolutionary. His registration offices were computerized even before digitization became fashionable. And the IT Action Plan he created became a foundational document for how deregulation was to unfold in India.

He shared a particularly revealing anecdote about how Reliance entered India’s telecom sector. Initially, he approached Tata to build the telecom infrastructure Andhra Pradesh needed. Tata said it would take time. So he went to Dhirubhai Ambani, who replied that Reliance was a petrochemicals company, not a telecom firm. Naidu went to Davos soon after. When he returned, Dhirubhai had changed his mind. “We will invest 5 billion dollars,” he said. That conversation catalysed the creation of Reliance Infocomm. Without exaggeration, that was the first spark of what we now recognise as India’s digital revolution.

What distinguishes Naidu from others is his insistence that governance must be outcome-based. “People are missing integration and outcomes,” he told me. “All data is available. AI is taking over everything. But are we measuring what matters?” This obsession with measurable impact is not theoretical. It has informed how Andhra Pradesh functions under his leadership.

Consider his Real-Time Governance Society (RTGS), which was launched during his earlier tenure. It monitored everything from teacher attendance to rainfall patterns to medicine stock-outs. It wasn’t just a control room. It was a nervous system. Today, he has reintroduced an even more advanced version, RTGS 2.0. This new iteration integrates performance-linked dashboards for 50,000 government officials, satellite imagery for land-use planning, and AI-based citizen feedback analysis. Most importantly, departmental KPIs are being hardwired into the budgeting process. This is governance with muscle and memory.

What I found most radical in our conversation, though, was his view of the family as the unit of development. “The family is the unit of the world,” he said. “Geo-tag every house. Track assets, liabilities, skills, incomes, and plan accordingly.” Under his Public-Private-People Partnership (P4) model, 20 lakh families in Andhra Pradesh have already been profiled. Their needs are matched with targeted interventions, dairy units, self-employment kits, skilling modules. Two cows, he said, can generate 20,000 rupees per month in income. This is not a handout. It is recurring, sustainable economic activity.

His vision does not end with one-time schemes. “This is a 10-year exercise,” he told me. “If you can ensure every family sees income growth, you will not have a standard of living crisis in India. Children will get educated, and families will escape poverty into the knowledge economy.” It is difficult to overstate how rare it is to hear this kind of long-term thinking from an Indian political leader.

He has even proposed public adoption models, where high-net-worth individuals support low-income families. He is building dashboards to track performance of every government functionary. He is introducing digital QR-coded assessments and perception ratings for officials. He wants governance to be judged not just by actions, but by what people actually experience.

At the heart of this lies the Swarna Andhra Pradesh @ 2047 plan. It sets clear, measurable targets: doubling per capita income from ₹2.95 lakh to ₹5.5 lakh, sustaining 15 percent GSDP growth, and ensuring 100 percent coverage of piped water, roads, cooking gas, electricity, and internet by 2030. Pilot districts are already showing results. Dropout rates in schools have fallen sharply. Sanitation coverage is nearing full saturation. Smart-metered cities are clocking 99 percent electricity uptime. None of these are abstract goals. They are tracked, verified, and fed directly into departmental planning.

He is equally bold in environmental governance. He spoke about how districts like NTR and Kakinada have been declared dumpyard-free. Solid waste and plastic segregation are decentralised. Fiscal incentives are tied to emission reductions. Industrial clusters in places like Sri City are being built around EV manufacturing, and the state is collaborating with ISRO and IIT Tirupati on energy storage solutions. He is integrating environmental performance into fiscal transfers for municipalities. This is not just a climate strategy. It is green federalism in action.

When I presented SKOCH’s own outcome tracking and impact indices to him—how we track not just inputs, but real project-level transformations, he was both engaged and excited. “You are doing the right experiment,” he said. “We need outcome-driven assessment across all domains. Otherwise, we are missing the point.”

He told me how Andhra Pradesh is preparing for the future with Quantum Technology Valleys, deep tech clusters in AI, drones, space, and semiconductors. “This is the next leapfrog,” he said. “We are designing the state’s industrial future, not waiting for the Centre to tell us what to do.” He is even thinking about tourism and entertainment zones near Amaravati to attract global talent. “Why should people come here if the quality of life isn’t great?” he asked. “We must create an ecosystem that appeals to families, not just investors.”

What impressed me most was not just his vision, but the institutional seriousness with which he wants to execute it. He is not chasing global rankings for vanity’s sake. He knows how indicators are cherry-picked and misrepresent developing contexts. But he also believes in performance benchmarking, as long as it reflects outcomes and not just coverage metrics.

In our conversation, I realised that Naidu’s biggest strength is his refusal to treat citizens as beneficiaries. He sees them as co-creators of prosperity. Entrepreneurs, contributors, investors in the future of the state. This is not just a moral orientation. It is a policy paradigm.

If India truly aspires to become a $30 trillion economy by 2047, it needs scalable models, not just big ideas. Andhra Pradesh, under Naidu’s leadership, is showing what, that model looks like. He is building not just a state, but a demonstration project for the country. And if we are honest, India does not need more populists or administrators. It needs system designers. It needs strategic executors. It needs more leaders like Chandrababu Naidu.