Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Wednesday was very significant for the North East when he explained that different steps taken by his government for the development of the region which hitherto remained the backwaters of development is set to percolate down to the grass-roots level. There is no denying the fact that the region has witnessed tremendous socio-economic upliftment in the last four years. Credit must also go to where it is due. The architect for this was the late Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during whose tenure a separate ministry (Ministry of Development of North East Region) was constituted to oversee the developmental works in the region in tandem with the North East Council. 

The region till then was torn between social-economic conflicts, insurgency, unemployment and above all a feeling of alienation from the mainstream India. Successive governments led by the Congress and other parties had paid any attention to the pressing problems of the region other than keeping the insurgency embers burning. If anything, they only compounded the matters which needed simple solutions. Today, all that has changed. There is a rejuvenated attempt to bring the region on the forefront of development. That credit must go to Prime Minister Modi, who made his ministers spend days in the region instead of local politicians making a beeline in the North and South Blocks waiting for the ever-elusive appointments from Central ministers. 

No doubt, today we can witness a qualitative change in the lives of the people and there is an all pervading feeling of a better dawn. For one, this was possible because there is a government that works. It does not feel the pangs of coalition politics as well as pulls and pushes from different corners. PM Modi has often said that India’s Look East policy is closely linked with the development of the North East. As Look East policy takes shape translating it on the ground level, North East is bound to a quantum leap insofar as its development is concerned. That is where the future of North East and its aspirations lie.