Introduction

• When we visualize the North East what comes to mind are the rhinos of Kaziranga, rain clouds and root bridges of Meghalaya, bamboo handicrafts, orchids of Arunachal but North East is not just about pleasant tourist spots, there is much more to it.
• It has an entity of its own but due its geographical isolation and perceived difference the region has faced backwardness and indifferent development in many sectors.

Geographical Challenges

• North Eastern Region of India consists of eight states namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. (Seven Sisters and Sikkim)
• The area of these 8 states together is smaller than some of the largest states in India like Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
• North East is connected to the rest of the country through a narrow corridor, generally called the chicken neck, near Siliguri region. North East is surrounded by five foreign countries. These are Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Nepal and Myanmar.
• Only about 30-35% of the area of North East is plain land, mostly in three valleys namely the Brahmaputra, the Barak and the Imphal Valleys. The rest of the area is hilly land.
• For a large part of these areas there is no proper and authenticated land records are available to show individual title over land.

Disaster Proneness of North East

• High rainfall and large river basins of the Brahmaputra and the Barak along with their narrow valleys regularly cause severe floods, erosion, landslides and sand deposition leading to loss of huge areas of valuable agricultural land and thereby reduction of the average size of land holdings in the region.
• The region is highly prone to Earthquakes and post the great earthquake of intensity of 8.5 in Richer Scale of 1950 in Assam, flood and erosion have increased in the state and till date about 5000-6000 sq.km of land has been lost due to erosion by rivers. This has made lakhs of people landless and homeless in the state.

Historical Challenges
Despite the above mentioned challenges, the North-eastern region was at par with rest of the country at independence but post-independence events have retarded the development of the region. These events are:-

• Partition of the country- When the major road, rail and river routes connecting North East to the rest of the country suddenly got snapped.
• The Chinese aggression of 1962 – When the Chinese army entered Arunachal Pradesh (called NEFA at that time) and returned of their own. This apparently created a feeling of fear in the minds of some private investors, and stalled the large-scale investment in North East.
• The Bangladesh Liberation was of 1971- When crores of people from Bangladesh entered some states of North East as refugees which changed the demographic situation in some state of North East bordering Bangladesh.
• Insurgencies: From the end of the seventies of the last century problems of insurgency started in states like Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Manipur, Insurgency affected the present day Nagaland and Mizoram in the fifties and sixties of the last century. Now, of course, due to various actions taken by the Central and State governments, insurgency in this region is no longer a matter of great concern.

Other Challenges of the region
In addition to the aforesaid geographical and historical challenges some other major challenges some other major challenges of North East are the following:

Agriculture-related challenges

• Low agricultural productivity, Low cropping intensity (about 1.5), Low coverage of irrigation
• Low application of chemical fertilizers, Low credit flow from banks, Credit deposit ratio is less than fifty percent in the North East.
• Inadequate availability of certified seeds and good quality planting materials, for all the farmers, Inadequate facilities for godowns, warehouses and cold storage etc.
• Absence of modern well equipped markets or mandis in the region, except in some few places.

Resources and industry related challenges

• Very low per capita consumption of power compared to the national average.
• Non-availability of ores of industrially usefulmetals like iron, aluminium, copper, zinc
• Non-availability of big reserve of good quality coal. Coal present in the North East often contains
  high percentage of sulphur which makes it unfit for use in industry.
• Absence of big industries except four oil refineries and two petrochemical complexes.

Lack of Social Infrastructure

• Inadequate number of polytechnics and higher institutions for engineering, medical and nursing studies etc.
• Teachers’ Training is poor thereby leading to poor standards of education.
• Poor performance in health indicators like IMR, MMR etc. along with acute lack of health infrastructure. Critical patients gravitate towards southern states.

Potential Sectors for North East
North East is comparatively backward even after seven decades of independence mostly due to the aforesaid challenges. In the absence of large scale manufacturing industrial base, the future of the region depends primarily on developing the following sectors

a) Agriculture including horticulture, floriculture;
b) Animal Husbandry like Dairy Farming, Goat rearing, Piggery, Poultry and Fishery
c) Food and Meat Processing industry
d) Tourism;
e) Sericulture and weaving and handloom and textiles through increasing production of yarns and other handicrafts.
f) Production of organic tea, organic food, mushroom and honey;
g) Production of Plastic goods;
h) Utilizing the huge amount of water available in local rivers and streams for generating hydelpower and arranging irrigation facilities.
i) Setting up industries for making garments, pharmaceuticals, paper and sugar etc. (Due to high rainfall and moisture content in the soil, North East seems highly suitable for large scale production of sugarcane, pulses, oil seeds and costly flowers like orchids);
j) Setting up sufficient number of polytechnics and institution for nursing, paramedics, pharmacy, repairing transformers and items like television, air conditioners, computers, washing machines, motor vehicles and refrigerator etc.

Way Forward

• The Centre’s renewed emphasis on translating the Act East Policy into reality has brought great hopes to the people of the North East.
• The languages of eleven ethnic groups of the North East are staring at extinction as each of these languages is spoken by less than ten thousand people. It has to be specially ensured that the process of development does not by-pass the small and marginalized ethnic groups of the region.
• To solve the unemployment problem in the region there should be special drives for increasing the intake of North East youth in railways, nationalized banks, central paramilitary forces including Assam rifles, airlines, oil refineries and other big central public sector undertakings.
• The population free atmosphere of the North East and the large number of youths who are very fluent in English can make the policy makers go a big way for setting up electronic industries and BPOs in the region.
• Finally, to provide incentives to all the people of North East in developing agriculture, industry and business, immediate steps are necessary for land reform including cadastral survey of non-forest unsurveyed areas, preparation of land records and giving of ownership right of land to all eligible people as per provisions of relevant land laws.