Book of Integration Council New - Ministry of Home Affairs

DR. Y. S. RAJASEKHARA REDDY
CHIEF MINISTER, ANDHRA PRADESH
Respected Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singhji, Respected
Minister of Home Affairs Mr. Shivraj Patilji, and Fellow members of the
National Integration Council,
A sense of patriotism pervades my spirit as I speak to you all from this
grand platform, which assumes added significance in the context of India’s
booming economy and its steady rise as a world power.
Of course, we are meeting at a crucial juncture as the nation has witnessed
some terrorist attacks, communal disturbances, cross-border terrorist acts and
naxalite violence in certain States. Still, it is to the credit of our millennia-old
culture that we speak as one. This oneness of spirit is essential to reinforce the
confidence which people have about the integrity of the nation.
Thank to the vision of Late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, this national forum
came into being in 1961 expressly to tackle problems arising out of the
complexity of the national fabric of multitudinous hues. Nehruji used to say:
“Crises and deadlocks, when they occur, have at least this advantage that
they force us to think”.
Interestingly, Nehruji’s views on the role of every citizen in contributing
to the emotional integration of the country and his accent on orienting education
to engender national integration continue to be relevant today even after
46 years of the first meeting of the National Integration Council.
We need to redouble our efforts to prop emotional integration and
ensure every citizen’s unstinted commitment to the integrity of the nation,
considering that some anti-national forces are trying to take undue advantage
of the national spirit of tolerance. We need to help people stay clear of
regional and communal conflicts.
Keeping in view the role State governments can play to cement national
integration, the Andhra Pradesh government has initiated several measures in
the recent past.
As regional imbalance and lopsided development could result in discontent
among the affected sections of people, we thought that one of the good
solutions to correct regional imbalances is to ensure balanced development
of all regions. With this as the guiding principle, we embarked on a massive
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