Crossroads for Development
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: March 02, 2015 -

The massive investment in developing roads and highways by countries around the world has been considered the key to speedy development.

However, critical observers have also pointed out that the history of developing roads and bridges, highways, railways and air-connectivity have often been tied to strategic and military interests of the nations.

Here, it would be wise to recall that in the introduction to “40 Years of the US Interstate Highway System: An Analysis” published in 1996, the authors Wendell Cox & Jean Love wrote that “America is a nation on wheels” and Americans had benefitted from “freedom of mobility that is unrivalled anywhere in the world.”

The two writers went on to state that a major chunk of development triggered by that mobility is attributable to the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defence Highways, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1996.

The duo argued that the interstate highway system in the United States, had positively influenced “economic growth, reduced traffic deaths and injuries, provided substantial benefits to users, and been a crucial factor in the nation's defence.”

Leaving aside political and ideological proclivity, the process of developing surface and air connectivity has brought economic dividends to the post-war Nation States albeit criticisms on how the process has been implemented vie State machineries.

While such a process of building roads and infrastructure had been regarded as one of the many models in the liberal discourse, there are other powerful views which say that developmental paradigms can only be understood in terms of the notions of the core and the periphery.

One primary issue raised by the proponents of these views include the polemics over the development of underdevelopment.

They argue that the development agenda of liberal States which forms the core hardly takes into consideration the overall welfare of the periphery, except extraction of natural wealth.

The core enriches itself at the cost of the periphery and this was in fact the cause of underdevelopment of the people located in the periphery.

Though the debate over paradigms of development continues, this singular understanding is good enough to analyse and re-analyse the slew of investments made on building roads and highways in the Northeast region of India.

In the era of Act East Policy, it should no longer be a problem for critics of developmental paradigms to pin point how ready is the Northeast region to embrace the spirit of the core while being the periphery or create a fine synthesis out of economic-strategic contradictions without being at the crossroads.