Achhe Din for Northeast
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 11, 2014 -

With nothing in store for them, introduction of the annual Railway Budget or Union Budget in the Parliament hardly made any difference to the people living in the north-eastern part of India in the past.

In fact, Railway Budget or Union Budget, are among some of the widely used terminologies in Indian democracy which are like Greek to them.

But when Railways Minister DV Sadananda Gowda presented the Railway Budget for 2014-15 in the Parliament on Tuesday and announced the proposal for introducing seven new trains and earmark Rs 5,116 crores for various ongoing railway projects in the Northeast for improving not just connectivity with the rest of the country but also for the promotion of eco-tourism and education tourism, it was altogether a different feeling for the people living in this ‘most neglected’ part of the country and they were forced to sit up and reckon whether this was the promise of “Achhe Din Aane Wale Hain” of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi led NDA Government at the Centre.

This feeling of the advent of good days ahead must have been surely reinforced on Thursday when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley came up with a slew of proposals and allocated Rs 53,706 crore in the ongoing fiscal for various developmental works to be taken up in the North East to put an end to the ‘sense of isolation’ that the people in the region have felt for so long.

In fact, from the proposals of giving boost to surface connectivity to agricultural research, and from encouraging organic farming to sports, the Union Budget 2014-15 have many things in store for the people of Northeast than they could have ever expected.

Realising the potential for development of organic farming, which could enable the local people to reap rich harvest by developing commercial organic farming, the Finance Minister has proposed Rs.100 crore for the purpose.

For improving the surface connectivity in the region, the Minister has also announced an investment of Rs.3,000 crore in the eight north-eastern states from the total proposed allotment of Rs.37,880 crore for the National Highways Authority of India.

Moreover, taking into consideration of the traditional skill and fame in sports sector in the north-eastern states, the Minister 15 has proposed to set up a sports university in Manipur at an estimated project cost of Rs.100 crore.

Even if none of the cities in the north-eastern states have been featured in the project of developing '100 smart cities', the announcement of setting up of an agricultural research institution of excellence in Assam and launching of new and exclusive television channel for the northeast are some other proposals that must have surely brought cheers among the people of the region.

This is all well for the Northeast and its ‘Achhe Din’. But we can’t help but to wonder over the decision of allocating Rs 200 crore for the construction of a statue of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel in Gujarat while earmarking just Rs 100 for as many as 29 schemes including Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana, Start Up Village Entrepreneurship Programme, setting up virtual classrooms and online courses, modernization of madarsas, etc which have the potential to change the lives of millions of people in the country including Northeast.

This shows that ‘Achhe Din’ for the whole country is still far off.