During the Telugu Desam Party regime, attending the World Economic Forum meetings was a fad for then chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
He used to spend huge public money to attend the WEF meetings being held at Davos and get massive publicity for the same, as if he was a great economist.
He even sent his son Lokesh to one of those meetings to boost his image.
In Telangana, too, K T Rama Rao attended a couple of WEF meetings and got wide publicity, though his father K Chandrasekhar Rao never evinced any interest in such publicity events.
Now, an opportunity has come for Andhra Pradesh industries minister Mekapati Gautam Reddy, too.
He received an invitation from WEF chief Borg Brande on February 16 itself, but he did not make it public. Even now, he has not decided yet whether there is a need to attend it or not.
Brande invited Mekapati to the global technology governance summit-2021 of the World Economic Forum to be held at Tokyo, the capital of Japan from April 5 to 7 2021.
He said the meeting would be held in a hybrid format so that Mekapati could join it either in-person or virtually.
The meeting would focus on emerging technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution which play a vital role as countries recover from and rebuild following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Andhra Pradesh has been a pioneer in the use of technology for societal benefit and participants would highly value your insights during the meeting. The World Economic Forum looks forward to building its engagement with the state under your leadership,” the WEF official said.