North-eastern dream

The States of north-eastern India demand their share of the development pie.

in Agartala

SANCHITA DEBNATH, daughter of a poor farmer in West Tripuras Jirania block, could not study beyond class eight, was married off at a young age, and became a mother of four before she turned 20. Her husband being a petty trader of bamboo handicraft items, with not much land at his disposal, the family found it difficult to make the ends meet.

Then she came across Savita Chaudhary, an assistant project director with the District Rural Development Authority (DRDA), and learnt the concept of self-help. Along with a group of 19 equally impoverished women, who pooled in Rs.50 each, she started a small workshop making bamboo handcrafts, which Sanchitas husband would help to sell. Subsequently, with financial assistance from the DRDA and a small bank loan, Sanchayani, the organisation started by Sanchita, became an established self-help group (SHG), helping poor women to keep their homes running. The SHG also helps them by lending money at easy interest rates. The bamboo items they make are now sold by Sanchita and her husband all over India in handicraft fairs.

But this is just one success story in this rich land of impoverished people struggling to make both ends meet with limited resources. Though endowed with rich natural resources and enterprising and gritty people, north-eastern India lags behind the rest of the country in all aspects of development.

At the time of Independence, the region was among the most prosperous in India, but Partition and the creation of East Pakistan changed its economic landscape, all but cutting it off from the mainland. Its only linkage with the country was now the narrow 27-kilometre Siliguri corridor, while over 98 per cent of the regions boundaries got converted into international borders shared with China and Bhutan in the north, Myanmar in the east, Bangladesh in the south and west and Nepal to the west of Sikkim.

The carving out of East Pakistan from Bengal blocked the natural sea route through the port of Chittagong, making the region land-locked. This blocked natural transportation routes and affected the regions market access. The geo-political distancing of the region from the main port of Kolkata combined with economic insulation, causing immense structural damage to the regions economy. This reflected in the way the region fell way behind the rest of India in all economic indices.

At the time of Independence the per capita income in the undivided State of Assam was 4 per cent higher than the rest of the country but it started to fall behind the national average after Partition, and the divergence only increased with time. In 1990-91, the regions per capita income at current prices was lower than the national average by 20 percentage points; this gap widened to 31 percentage points by 2004-05.

In several other indicators as well, the region lags behind the rest of the country. People do not have adequate access to basic services. The standard development indicators such as road length, access to health care, and power consumption are much lower than the national average. Even the creation of an exclusive planning body, the North Eastern Council, did not help much because of institutional flaws. Created in 1971 and functional from 1972, the council did not have its role and its relationship with the Planning Commission defined clearly and the size of its budget was not specified. Union Minister for the Development of North East Region (DoNER) Mani Shankar Aiyar said: The North Eastern Council has not been doing any regional planning or analysis because there is no information available on the resources at the disposal of the NEC. No one knows the sectoral linkages.

The apathetic attitude of the Centre showed a distinct shift with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments Look East policy. The Ministry of DoNER, in consultation with the NEC, has for the first time prepared a blueprint, called NER Vision 2020, for the regions development. It was signed on May 13, by the Governors and Chief Ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura in Agartala, after elaborate discussions over two days.

The meet, chaired by Mani Shankar Aiyar, focussed on a fivefold development perspective encompassing economic development, institutional development, participatory development, human resource development and infrastructure development.

Agriculture being the mainstay of the north-east, the emphasis is on maximising the potential in this sector by increasing production, growing high-yielding crops, promoting horticulture and floriculture, gradually shifting away from the traditional jhoom form of cultivation and developing market linkages and credit facilities. Vision 2020 calls for a North East Agriculture and Allied Activities Development and Export Promotion policy along the lines of the existing North East Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy.

The infrastructure development perspective lays emphasis on rail, road and air connectivity, cyber and telecom connectivity, inland waterways and power. The document also lists ways to enhance the share of private investment in the region to tap the vast potential in the field of quarrying and mining in order to bring about the desired change in the sectoral composition of the regions gross domestic product (GDP).

Capacity building in the field of human resource is another area on which the document lays emphasis. Though the region has a comparatively high literacy rate, there is inadequate access to quality education, vocational training, training in languages, computer training, information technology and business and management skills. Investment in these fields, with private participation, is a thrust area of the Vision 2020 document, which also urges the Centre to redefine its Look East policy to resolve outstanding issues of trade, transit and investment with neighbouring countries.

It says that the region has not benefited from the Look East policy even though South East Asia begins in the north-east of India. It says that it is imperative to address the challenges of border management, especially with regard to cross-border migration, terrorism, drugs and arms supply and other forms of non-conventional security threats before the Look East policy can become a success.

The document stresses the potential role of tourism to boost development in the region. Mani Shankar Aiyar said that special incentives were now being given to Central government employees to travel to the north-east at his Ministrys behest.

An independent regional airline is in the process of being created and is likely to begin operations on January 1, 2009. Subsidised by the DoNER Ministry, it will run services within the region. An experts committee has already identified a modern fleet for the airline.

This ambitious and aspirational vision, however, involves an investment of Rs.13 lakh crore in the next 12 years before it can turn dreams into reality. But that did not dishearten the regions Chief Ministers, who pledged to realise the goals.

Speaking on behalf of all the Chief Ministers, Tripuras Manik Sarkar sounded a note of warning to the Central government, saying: I would like to tell the Government of India that enough is enough. Time and tide cannot wait for anyone. We would not like to wait a moment more. I urge the Government of India to come forward for the all-round development of this region. We shall not leave any stone unturned to implement this document. Placing a special emphasis on the creation of infrastructure, he said the lack of proper infrastructure had resulted in failure to tap the regions full potential and in uneven development. The most important task is to even this out, he said.

One of the fallouts of the uneven development has been insurgency. While States such as Tripura and Mizoram have now limped back to normalcy after facing decades of insurgency, Manipur is still grappling with the problem. Experts agree that if adequate care to develop the region is not taken, insurgency may become a major problem.

The National Liberation Front of Tripura (Nayan Bashi faction), which spearheaded the insurgency in Tripura for more than a decade, laid down arms only after it reached a tripartite agreement with the then National Democratic Alliance government and the Tripura government in 2003 after being assured of redressal of grievances.

The organisation is restive once again, with the Centre and the State not keeping their promises. These included the constitution of an autonomous council for Tripura with direct funding from the NEC and a package for tribal development.

According to NLFT leaders Aaron Borok and Daniel Borok, self-designated prime minister and home minister, respectively, if the promises made by the governments are not honoured immediately, disgruntled rebels might take to insurgency once again.

It is perhaps time New Delhi paid heed to Manik Sarkars warning.