The upcoming 68th Plenary Session of North Eastern Council (NEC) scheduled to be held at Guwahati on August 3 & 4 next is going to be of huge importance for Arunachal Pradesh and all Northeast states. This is because it is here at the plenary session these states can convey their developmental requirements directly to the hierarchies of central government in a face-to-face ambience and  receive new directions for the way ahead.

NEC, as the name suggests is exclusively for Northeast states and was established through North Eastern Council Act, 1971 initially as an apex advisory body for securing balanced and coordinated development and facilitating effective co-ordination amongst the states of the region. But since 2002 it enjoys the status of aRegional Planning Body and now discusses any matter in which these states have a common interest and decide courses of action to be taken on any such matter. Besides taking care of the economic and social planning, NEC also serves as a platform for mediation in cases of inter-state disputes. And to add further edge,during the last plenary session in July 2018, it underwent a good amount of restructuring through the nomination of the Union Home Minister as ex-officio Chairman and Minister of State (Incharge) DoNER as Vice-Chairman. This was done to keep in tune with the evolving scenario with drug trafficking, arms and ammunition smuggling and many similar evils causing a lot of concern for the governments in the region.

 

Few will doubt that Northeast part of the country has lagged in pace of development vis-a vis rest of the country and among the many contributing causes, inordinate delays in building infrastructures has been a major one. To deal with these challenges, particularly in the context of the new policy of the centre to give special attention to this region, many experts feel that NEC is the appropriate body to fast-track these developmental aspirations. With a different approach allowing  equal participation of all eight stakeholder states and the Union government as chief mentor, this inclusive forum has no doubt raised new hopes. The current foreign policy which has giving  an extra strategic importance to the region since it shares 90 percent of its boundary with China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and  Nepal has also added to the reinforcement of the NEC. For countering China’s Belt & Road Initiative, India has no option but to undertake  similar such infrastructural initiatives and NEC has thus been projected as an apt enabler of these goals.

For Arunachal, it is doubtlessly going be a great platform for putting forward the long term developmental goals and it may be expected that it is utilized advantageously to garner maximum benefits for the state. 

---

Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

<< Back to News List