Infrastructure sans Services
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: March 25, 2015 -

Infrastructure building has been one of the main focus areas of the any developmental initiatives.

However, the logic of linear modernisation seems to have given additional emphasis on infrastructure development which distances itself from the core issues confronting the citizens of most developing Nation States. Such are the contradictions of development.

India’s developmental initiatives are not free from certain discrepancies when it comes to actual implementation of policies.

The existence of numerous loopholes in the policy implementation renders any initiatives toothless.

It may be recalled that in pursuance of supposedly new initiatives for the Northeast region in 1996, a high level commission was appointed under the chairmanship of SP Shukla, then a member of the erstwhile Planning Commission which has now been replaced by National Institution for Transforming India or NITI Aayog.

The commission in its terms of reference aimed to critically examine basic minimum services in the Northeast and the gaps in important sectors of infrastructure development.

Key focus areas included power, communication, railways, roads, education, agriculture, etc.

However, over the years, it has been observed that the attempt at transforming India’s Northeast had been given to developing surface connectivity – specifically roads and bridges including railways.

The Shukla Commission made recommendations for a region embroiled in political turmoil for decades.

Special focus was given on measures to bridge the gaps between infrastructure and basic minimum services.

It was observed that the regional economies were characterised by deficit and dependency on the rest of the country for basic needs.

While such observation can be debated taking into account the quantum of continual extraction of the region’s natural wealth including oil and other products, what one can observe over the period of time since the advent of India’s Look East Policy has been the inherent weaknesses in conceptual framing of policies meant for the region.

Most often, the snail pace of progress in the region has been blamed on the volatile political situations in the States without delving deeper into the crisis of inherent conceptual poverty.

Moreover, the Union Government can pump in funds meant for developing basic infrastructure like surface connectivity.

However, in the process of building roads and bridges, the mandarins both at the Centre and the States seem to have forgotten that such initiatives without simultaneously improving existent healthcare system, entrepreneurial efforts and grounding in education will only add complexities to the already compounded socio-economic situations in the region.

Perhaps, now is the time to ask who actually benefits from gigantic tasks of building only roads and bridges while other basic services in the Northeast remain in shambles.