Impressed mostly by the progress achieved by smaller and relatively younger countries like Singapore and Malaysia, the chief minister who has won the tag of hi-tech Babu within the state, is intent on turning Andhra Pradesh into a "wired and intelligent" state within a matter of one year.

Talking to a group of journalists over lunch today, Naidu unfolded his plan for the Hyderabad Integrated System (HIS), which is to be the model for the rest of the state, which will start functioning within the next six months.

Soon municipal taxation within Hyderabad and also the billing for all public services like water and electricity will be totally computerised and payable at any bank counter within the city after the consumers ascertain the amounts fromeither interactive electronic kisoks or their own computer consoles at home, he said.

The implementation of the project is being overseen by a committee of experts which updates the chief minister every Friday on the progress. As a pilot, all high-tension (HT) electricity connections within the city will be put on a computerised network with period metre readings being taken on hand-held computers by metre readers.

Similarly, all other public services too would be computerised in due course with the bill collection entrusted to a single authority irrespective of the kind of service provided, Naidu said.

The major coup for the chief minister, however, is his roping in IBM to digitise the entire liquor industry and network in the state beginning from the manufacturing end to warehousing and distribution within Andhra Pradesh.

With a view to prevent the frequent cases of malpractices to beat the excise system, IBM has been put on the innovative job which will use visual scanners and bar-coding mechanismsto keep track of each and every liquor bottle that rolls out of the distilleries within the state, Naidu informed.

This would not only streamline the excise system plugging the revenue leakages, but also put an end to all malpractices like smuggling liquor from neighbouring states and selling spurious spirits within the state, he said.

The system would enable squaring of books by the excise departments virtually every evening and determine how they should have been collected.Similarly, the entire residential and commercial property taxation system is also being computerised with the entire Hyderabad city already digitised using a geographical information system (GIS). This is expected to simplify the whole mechanism of assessment for municipal taxation apart from detecting any illegal boundaries put up by residents.

While Naidu has embarked on an ambitious information technology programme notwithstanding his time-consuming political preoccupation, it is not lost on the chief minister that he has anuphill task before him. "Though the rest of the world has recognised the true worth of what I am doing, the real problem is actually back home," he said.

Despite the ease with which he has been able to rope the who-is-who of the information technology world, Naidu has been facing obstacles not only from his political opponents but also his own bureaucrats primarily. "They do not understand the true worth of the information technology tools which can be used to administer in a better manner," he maintained.

The upshot of the move is that one of the first to fly to Singapore on the new flight from Hyderabad which has come about after hectic lobbying for one year by the chief minister, will be a plane load of bureaucrats who will be trained by the Singaporean authorities in hi-tech administration, Naidu said.