The Northeast is at the center again, this time for the right reasons. The recent VVIP visit emphasised the criticality of the region as a spring board of activity for furthering India’s interests to the east; from Myanmar to Vietnam and to South West China. There was quick follow-up by the foreign secretary to bolster cross-border trade. During a visit to South Korea, I remember the architect of their economic revolution in the late ’60s telling me to forget the lectures on comparative advantage — whatever we did, he said, we did it well. Efficient import substitution is the other side of the coin of export promotion — Robert Wade was to make this quote famous in his piece on strategic policy-making. In the hill states around the Brahmaputra valley and its tributaries, which from our upper caste perspective we call the ‘‘Northeast’’, given that the centre in our narrow minds lies in Aryavarta, domestic reform is the other side of the coin of trade and openness. When the foreign office said we must have a vision of the Ganga and the Mekong, I was quick to point out that I have always believed that it has to be the Brahmaputra and the Mekong. We have to now seriously begin the long journey from clever phrases to strategic action. We must start with the mindset. It is not enough to say that the region is beautiful, richly endowed with bio diversity, water and energy resources and has an educated labour force, all of which give it immense potential for growth, even when it has been done poorly in the past. We must believe in this. This, then, means that when programmatic policies are designed and implemented on banking and loans, infrastructure investment, technological support and human resource development, the region must get its due rather than unimplementable general guidelines, like ten per cent of each region’s expenditure must be on the region. On a recent visit to Itanagar, I came across a young man who owned the Baat farm and Tempo Medicinal and Oil Industries near the Ganga lake, a site near Itanagar. He was unsuccessful in arranging for a loan of Rs 25,000 per hectare for growing Patchouli and Stevia. It may be pointed out here that NABARD started a project with funding up to a lakh of rupees per hectare for the same purpose in South Gujarat and nearby areas in Maharashtra. Chief Minister Apang makes impassioned pleas that his paddy farmers must get the support price plus transport costs, a perfectly logical argument in a reforming economy, but these are voices in the wilderness. Plan assistance in the special category states is high, but support for market policies which make the area self-reliant is not visible. The infrastructure is miserable. Accessibility is non-existent. To an extent, the problems of communication, water and energy investments are interrelated. For too long we have talked about the problem. For decades the Brahmaputra Flood Control Board did nothing. Then A.V. Mohile, one of our thinking engineers, pointed out that the Brahmaputra and its tributaries were historically rivers of communication, not only between the seven sisters, but also the larger region we are now talking about. If we get back to this concept, the dams will be smaller, for the flow requirements of navigation are continuous, unlike the peak needs of irrigation and power, but the projects would be more sustainable and of greater benefit to the region. Again, apart from drawing lines on a map and calling it interlinking, no worthwhile work has been done. Progress with the links with outside areas is also scanty. Here the rivers, roads and air traffic will need to be connected. I was a supporter of India helping Myanmar in road construction and the road to Kalewa is working although I am told it needs better maintenance. I hope this will be done, particularly since our foreign secretary had initiated these ideas when he was our ambassador to Myanmar. From Itanagar, Kunming is close by. The region is growing fast. The tribes on our side have historical links with their counterparts across borders. We need to capitalise on and benefit from these synergies. But for that we need a new mindset and policies on the ground. The human resource of the region needs nurturing. Certainly, all states are not equally developed. At the time of Independence there was hardly a literate person in the then NEFA left behind by the British. The lag continues in spite of progress as shown by the human development report of Arunachal University. Above all, infrastructure investments have to expand. A recent seminar at the Institute of Human Development with the Arunachal University has asked for at least ten per cent of the investments based on exchange reserves in public private partnerships for the region. Is anybody listening?
