Status of Development of NE States in India in the National Perspective

The present paper intends to bring out the position of the North Eastern States vis-à-vis the other states of India in matters of prosperity on the basis of the most recent available as well as comparable data compiled from secondary sources. Development or prosperity encapsulates and represents a multidimensional connotation. To capture the multidimensionality of development, this paper visualizes eight aspects of development, namely (i) physical infrastructure, (ii) social or institutional infrastructure (ii) industrial performance (iv) service sector and openness of the region, (v) human development, (vi) employment of the human resources, (vii) privatization of industry and investment and (viii) public efforts expressed in terms of govt. expenditure to facilitate promotion, maintenance and governance of development activities. Applying the Principal Component Analysis the study measures the indices of prosperity and rank of different states accordingly. The findings reveal that although overall infrastructure is unsatisfactory in the entire northeast, the state of Tripura has done commendably well with respect to industrialization and Assam has done well in privatization. In other aspects of development there is a mixed scenario mainly due to rigidities, gaps, and imbalances in priorities and the efforts made to promote different aspects in coordination with each other. Success in achievement in human development in some states is mostly due to the contributions made by the missionaries and easy flow of funds from the Centre. Impact of globalization is unobservable and privatization is at the back end. Private investment from within the region is not coming up and investment from outside is not encouraged due to protectionist attitude. Two important factors such as land and labor that are crucial to private investment are the major stumbling block in the region because of prevalent land laws and the so-called problems associated with migration of laborers from outside the region.