Imagination and Development
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: October 15 2015 -
From time to time, there have been reports on how the Government of India stresses on the need to assess and reassess major projects and other issues related to border trade, status on Integrated Check-Posts (ICPs), land custom stations; border haats; banks; visa facility etc., in the Northeastern region of India.
While the Governments in the region have been giving their own inputs depending on their own perceived realities, mort of the times, it turns out that the realities of the region are not as sweet or sour as officially stated.
The peculiarities of the region based on the uniqueness of its socio-economic milieu, the North East Council (NEC) was established as the nodal agency for the economic and social development of the region.
The Narendrad Modi led Government in recent times has renewed its vigour following certain notions on the need to push India’s policy eastward.
Here, it is worth recalling that the NEC was constituted in 1971 with the objective of “beginning of a new chapter of concerted and planned endeavour for the rapid development of the region.”
When the Northeast is considered a region by virtue of being locked in a political and economic cartography, there is a need to review and also shut paths which have been rendered ineffective in the past.
As argued elsewhere, the idea of Northeast in the colonial period has been conceptualized purely in its geo-administrative and strategic context.
However, the advent of NEC and its objectives have been different from the rationale of the colonial regime infused with paradigms which are both applicable and inapplicable.
The proponents those treating the region as one have not been able to translate the objectives of development into a collective Northeast vision.
This is precisely due to the overzealous endeavours of pushing forth an oversimplified mantra based on broad developmental indicators like building infrastructure, connectivity and capital driven growth.
The imagination of setting the region on a rapid development track has often eclipsed sensitive socio-political issues which had caused untold turmoil in the Northeast.
Therefore, an impassionate review of development driven projects sponsored by a supposedly benevolent Centre in the entire region will have implications not imagined earlier.
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