The good thing removal of special tag
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: October 10, 2013 -

For a State like Manipur, which has no policy or programme worth naming for proper utilisation of its available resources, and thus, remained clinching to the mercy of Central funding for everything including payment of salary and pensionary benefits to its own employees; removal from the list of Special Category States is like a great fall from the grace.

In its report submitted to the Union Finance Ministry on September 26 last, the six-member Committee on Evolving a Composite Development Index of States headed by former Chief Economic Advisor and now RBI Governor Dr Raghuram Rajan has taken out five States of the Northeast region including Manipur from the special category state list and brought them under the category of less developed states.

Earlier, all the eight States of the Northeast, including Sikkim, were listed among the least developed states, which were given special category status. Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim, which were earlier on the special category list, are now on a par with developed states like Gujarat, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka as less developed states.

The loss of special category status would mean that the Governments of Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim would no more be entitled to the 90 percent financial assistance they used to receive as grant and the remaining 10 percent as loan from the Centre for taking up developmental projects and schemes in their respective States.

Instead, they would now get 30 per cent grant and 70 per cent loan.

It is interesting to know that while the Chief Ministers of other developed States like Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, etc have been trying their level best and succeeded in lobbying for inclusion of their respective States in the special category list, poor and undeveloped Manipur has projected itself to be a developed State with GDP growth rate recorded even higher than the National rate.

The report of the Dr Raghuram Rajan has been based on the assessment of the datas and information provided by the respective State Governments.

So, when the Government of Manipur claims itself to be developed and submitted datas to show that there is self sufficient in food grain production in the State, cent-percent success rate in implementation of schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, drastic reduction in child mortality rate and all the basic necessities like electricity, water and road and communication facilities, etc ensured to all the people in even in the rural areas, then who is Dr Raghuram Rajan to say that Manipur is not developed?

But why is the State Government and its bureaucrats lying and submitting false reports to the Centre? Is it just to get some awards as one of the best performing States in the country?

Or, Is there something more sinister in the mindset at work here? If there were any development work at all, then it should be seen on the ground.

But there is nothing to be seen at all, except in the Government files.

This shows that the fund provided by the Centre for taking up developmental works have been going into the private pockets of Ministers and bureaucrats all these years.

So, in a way, its good to know that removal of Manipur from the list of special category states would seal the pockets of these corrupt Ministers and officials as well.