Providing air connectivity between various State capitals of the North-Eastern States, inclusion of Bangladesh in India’s ‘Act East’ policy, imparting education and job skills to English-speaking youth and bringing about wholesome economic development of the region were some of the major proposals put forward by the first-ever meeting of NITI NE Forum held here on Tuesday.

The meeting, attended by Central Minister for the region Jitendra Singh, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar, and three Chief Ministers from the North-East, among others, also decided to recommend several high priority missions for horticulture, food processing, bamboo utilisation and tourism for the economic growth of the region. In addition to the Chief Ministers of Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland, Ministers from several other States in the region attended the meeting.

The forum, set up at the instance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February, has been given the task of identifying constraints that hamper socio-economic development of India’s most neglected region and streamlining resources available for its growth. Set up under the policy think-tank NITI Aayog, the forum would work closely with the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region and the North Eastern Council and have senior bureaucrats from the States and the Centre, policy makers, and other experts as members.

Echoing the Prime Minister Modi’s campaign slogan during the recent Tripura elections, Kumar said there is need to build highways, i-ways, roadways and airways (HIRA) for the development of the region.

Similarly, if education and skill development opportunities are not provided to the young population, it may hamper the development of the region, he said.

The NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman also stressed upon the need for providing air connectivity between the different State capitals in the region when the next phase of regional connectivity scheme, UDAAN-3, is planned.

The Minister for DoNER, Jitendra Singh, said the current NDA government has been doing a lot for the development of the region like none others in the past.

According to Kumar, one of the easy things that can be done to promote the North-East in other parts of India is to set up showrooms of products from the North-Eastern region in districts. “In India, there are about 700 districts. Even if we can open such showrooms in at least half of them, that would be great,” he said. According to him, the idea should be to have one showroom which would display and sell products all eight States in the region.

Addressing the forum, Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb said there is a need to accelerate several infrastructural projects which have already been initiated. The projects include Trans-Asian Railways, connecting many South-East Asian countries, Asian Highway connecting Bhutan to India-Bangladesh border and developing ground infrastructure such as cold storage and night landing. There is a need to improve the cargo handling capacity at the airports in the region to boost food processing in the States, he said.

Another suggestion that emerged at the meeting was the need for including Bangladesh in India's ‘Act East’ policy as it opens the sea route not just for the North-Eastern States, but also the landlocked countries in the neighbourhood.

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