Only catchy phrases and alluring documents ?
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 17 2018 -

A world without internet and mobile connectivity is simply unthinkable these days.

Banking, insurance, health and many, many sectors of everyday life have been digitized to a great extent over the last couple of decades.

In fact, the Government of India has been working to digitize all its machinery including payment and collection of different taxes.

It was in this backdrop that Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad launched a Vision Document for digital North East on August 12.

Put in a nutshell, the Vision Document seeks to transform people’s lives in the North East region and ‘enhance ease of living’ by 2022 by leveraging digital technologies.

The Vision Document complements with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of last year at least theoretically.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “NE will not be known as North East anymore, but New Engine — for the new engine which will drive India’s economy forward.”

The Prime Minister seems committed to put the backward North East on a new trajectory of development and progress.

But it has been more than one year since the catchy sobriquet was coined but very little has changed on the ground.

A critical analysis of the ground reality would render the Prime Minister’s sobriquet bombastic.

The North East region still remains quite backward in all aspects of socio-economic development parameters.

The much hyped Look East Policy formulated in the early 1990’s during the Prime Ministership of PV Naramsimha Rao is yet to take off.

Yes, many development projects including construction and expansion of roads are being implemented across the region but they are too little and too late

For too long, the Government of India neglected the region and blamed the region’s underdevelopment on its geographical features such as land-lockedness, hilly terrain, remoteness etc.

But the whole notion about the North East region underwent a dramatic change once New Delhi mandarins realized the necessity to engage with ASEAN countries economically and politically.

Suddenly, the region’s highly disadvantageous location became a hotspot of opportunities.

In another word, there was a disconnect in New Delhi’s policy with regard to the North East region, and this policy disconnect is largely responsible for the vast disparity between the region and other parts of the country.

The Prime Minister may have his own vision to transform the North East region as a new engine of growth and development for the whole country.

But the bitter truth is, a lot more needs to be done, that too expeditiously without bureaucratic or political hassles in order to tap the potential and opportunities provided by the region’s geographical location, and transform the region as India’s gateway to South and South East Asia.

India and ASEAN celebrated 25 years of partnership in 2017.

Such is India’s engagement with ASEAN but the country’s physical (land) connectivity with its eastern neighbours is quite poor.

Standard, all-weather highways are very few and inadequate in the country’s North East region even though it shares international boundaries with Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, Bhutan and Nepal.

Everybody would like to see the Prime Minister’s New Engine (North East region) of growth roaring but it is anybody’s guess how long it will take for the new engine to come alive.

We don’t know how pragmatic the ‘Digital North East: Vision 2022 is but the Prime Minister’s vision of transforming the region as a new engine of growth will greatly depend on transforming the Vision Document into a live and result oriented document.