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Published Dec 24, 2025 | 2:46 PM ⚊ Updated Dec 24, 2025 | 2:46 PM
BRS chief KCR.
In his inimitable style, BRS president and former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Sunday pricked the balloon of hype surrounding Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) signed at investment summits, portraying them as glittering stage props.
Investment meets, he said, were routinely projected by political leaders as irrefutable proof that their states possessed the world’s most investor-friendly ecosystems.
“But the reality,” he remarked dryly, “is that they are never what they appear to be,” before dipping into Andhra Pradesh’s recent political past.
Recalling an investment summit held in Visakhapatnam during N Chandrababu Naidu’s tenure as Chief Minister between 2014 and 2019, KCR said the government went on an MoU-signing overdrive to create the illusion of an investment deluge reminiscent of Noah’s time.
“They even had MoUs signed by chefs and attendants at the star hotel where the summit was held,” he said, sending the media gallery roaring with laughter. “Had all those investments been real, Andhra Pradesh would have attracted ₹20 lakh crore in Naidu’s first term itself.”
Having warmed up, KCR then widened his attack to what he described as the countrywide outbreak of “MoU mania.”
He recalled attending an investment summit in Madhya Pradesh during his tenure as Telangana Chief Minister, an event that had Prime Minister Narendra Modi in attendance. Yashodhara Raje, then a Minister in the Madhya Pradesh government, made a refreshingly candid admission that most of the MoUs being signed were bogus.
She had, he said, even urged him to restrain his son and former minister KT Rama Rao from “taking away all the investments” to Telangana. “I told her there was only one solution—work as hard as KTR does,” KCR quipped.
Tracing the origins of the MoU culture, KCR said the obsession began with his former political mentor and now arch-rival Chandrababu Naidu. “This whole fascination started with him,” he said, taking an oblique swipe at the present Congress government in Telangana, while referring to the recently held Global Investment Summit at Future City, which he dismissed as a “ridiculous idea.”
As KCR methodically dismantled what he called the myth of MoUs, this correspondent was reminded of a remark by then NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya during a visit to Andhra Pradesh during Naidu’s first term.
Lacing his words with black humour, Panagariya had said the state need not press for Special Category Status as it was already “on a gravy train,” given the claims of investments worth thousands of crores pouring in.
Sadly, that gravy train derailed in 2019—though, judging by recent claims, it appears to be back on track, chugging down and blowing its whistle once again.
