The Hindu Business Line : Lifeline for the North-East

While economic growth over the past few years has been sustained, it is often forgotten how uneven has been its spread across the sub-continent. States such as Maharashtra, the southern States, Gujarat and Delhi, of late, that were already prosperous, have become even more so, attracting the bulk of investments, generating the majority of jobs and raising the standards of living substantially. For decades, policy-makers have fought to reverse skewed development in favour o f resource-rich but backward States such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and, now, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand, through heavily funded development schemes, often to no avail. But no region is a more telling indictment of development policy as the North-East.

At the National Development Council meet last December, the Chief Ministers of the North-Eastern States spoke of the need to encompass them in the growth process, a sentiment echoed by the Prime Minister. The Planning Commission has drawn up elaborate plans for development of that region over the next five years but clearly, with the rapid pace of growth elsewhere in the country, some out-of-the box thinking is required for solutions to the decades-long problem of stagnation. For starters, policymakers ought to look at backwardness as a latent opportunity rather than a law and order problem. As the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, observed recently, the English language skills of the North-East can be a strong recruitment incentive for industries with skilled labour shortages, such as the IT sector. Second, banks have tended so far to shy away from the region, with the result that aggregate deposits and credit are the lowest for any region in the country; they must also re-adjust their focus. But banks would do so if the investment potential exists and policymakers must use the public-private partnership route to build roads and infrastructure as a means to generating economic activity.

Help might be at hand from the private sector. Driven by the need for cheap and skilled labour, major IT companies are now looking to the North-East, with Tata Consultancy Services willing to set up training programmes in local educational centres. New Delhi must do its bit to enrich skills through more professional colleges like the IIT-Guwahati and create the infrastructure that will encourage more firms to seek talent there. If indeed the pioneering efforts pay off, the high-tech industry could well become the lifeline of the people, unlike manufacturing, for which the region does not offer much location advantage. New Delhi must seek new solutions to old problems with a new mindset of inclusion through economic activity rather than through budgetary allocations and intimidation. Higher economic growth and prosperity would surely ensure more effective peace than any army can.

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