Asom govt to hire McKinsey to chalk out all-round growth

Guwahati, Aug 6 (UNI) Asom is all set to hire the consultancy services of McKinsey to chart a road map for all-round growth of the state and is toying with the idea of selling water to other states.

Taking part in a 'Meet the press' programme, Chief Minister Trun Gogoi today said that the state government would emphasise on rural development and agriculture. ''I know we need to focus on Information technology and in fact I met Infosys chief Narayan Murthy yesterday,'' he said.

''I want to bring in McKinsey to prepare the road map. Instead of a piecemeal approach there should to be an integrated approach and once we follow that everything else will follow'' he said.

The Chief Minister had one round of meeting but the deal was not yet finalised.

''West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra had done it and we also want to do that. There will be some expenditure but it is worth paying for such a bigger cause,'' he said.

Regarding the highly ambitious plan of selling water, the Chief Minister said it was his own plan.

''We have a lot of water. Nothing tangible has been done but the fact remains that one day water will be an equally expensive commodity like oil and power. We have abundant water and can supply that to other needy states'' he said.

Sounds too ambitious, the Chief Minister Gogoi said he ''could always predict the future crisis. I told the same thing to tea industry many years ago. I asked them to diversify. But they did not do it and now they are going down'' he said.

Mr Gogoi said the water plan is right now at an embryonic stage but officially the state chief minister was not favourable to the grand river lineage project of the NDA government.

''We will see if there is any business viability to my thoughts'' he said.

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