May 2, 2016

'Close economic ties with Myanmar & Bangladesh key to NE India's prosperity'

Noted economist and National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Ayog full-time member Professor Bibek Debroy said that forging close economic ties with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and South East Asia is the key for prosperity and development of Northeast India. Professor Debroy was delivering the 3rd Professor Sarat Mahanta Memorial lecture at the Royal Group of Institutions at Gorchuk on Sunday evening.

He spoke on ‘Recrafting Development: Prospects & Challenges of Economic Growth in North East India’. Prof Debroy also spoke strongly in favour of decentralisation of power and devolution of more powers to states.

Prof Debroy, who was born in Assam, laid out a roadmap for the development of this region which, he said, is viewed as “bypassed and marginalized”. Building tourism hubs in the region, making it the educational and medical node of the country, tapping natural reserves like bamboo, handlooms and mineral reserves and the hydropower potential of the region were his prescriptions for fuelling economic growth of the region.

 Noting that the Northeast was one of the relatively prosperous regions of the subcontinent till the 1930s when “history severed natural economic and commercial flows”, Prof Debroy said that “some ingredients” of the big task of re-establishing those flows “are falling in place and we are repairing part of the historical damage”. (Courtesy of The Sentinel)

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