Union information and broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu started the ‘information yatra’, which aims at visiting every state’s capital to spread awareness about the Centre’s schemes.
Naidu has already visited 21 states and said that, the main purpose of these visits is to analyze the government schemes already running and removing the drawbacks if any. In his statement to ET, Naidu said that, there were few procedural problems in several states, which have been taken care of during the visit.
Among the decisions taken by Naidu to spread awareness about the Centre’s work are, setting up of Doordarshan’s regional channel in Chhattisgarh, a Mann ki Baat-kind of a programme in Jharkhand, a PIB website in Tamil and two transmitters in Chhattisgarh and surrounding areas. All of these are expected to come up within the next two months. The minister has already set deadlines for all these and he has asked for regular updates to be sent to him.
The information yatra is also an attempt by the government to strengthen its information broadcast in regional languages. A special field publicity unit has been set up with professionals, who perform different activities, street plays, awareness seminar etc to educated people about the efforts of the government.
Naidu’s Naidu’s recent visit to Chennai faced some allegations that the Centre was trying to interfere in the State’s working. Responding to this Naidu said that his state visits were not to grade them on bases of performance but, the visits were to help them improve their work. He further added that he was looking at Central schemes which are the responsibility of the Centre and hence was not interfering in the state’s work. He also appreciated the support given by Jayalalithaa when she was alive, for such Centre’s schemes.
Naidu is soon to visit, West Begal, where he is expecting criticism form Mamata Banerjee regarding the information yatra.
According to officials, the minister is mainly reviewing the implementation of Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, both of which focus on creating better cities and providing basic services such as water supply, sewerage and urban transport. His other focus is also to ensure effective communication of the government’s schemes.