Is Northeast India Ready to Become the Gateway to Southeast Asia and Pacific Countries?

Abstract

In India, it was observed that there was an upward linear trend in poverty rate as longitude increases, i.e. a west-to-east variation of poverty instead of north-to-South variation in global scenario. There were various factors other than geography that influenced economic development in east and northeast India. One of the reasons was neglecting east and northeast for emphasising more importance to western market including West Asia. But the scenario has been changing gradually. The international economic order has changed during the last few decades and is expected to go on changing. Asia’s recovery and growth has been exceptional in contrast to the downside risk to growth in the West. Realising this fact, policy makers in India first proposed the “Look East Policy” in 1992 and then the “Act East Policy” in 2014. The “Act Easy Policy” recognises the importance of the Northeast India along with Eastern India as the gateway to the South East Asian countries as well as the Pacific countries. So, the development of the northeast region is a priority in this policy. Development of northeast region means to achieve the goals like infrastructure development, conflict resolution, reduction of inequality and disaster management. This paper discusses in the light of the various reports and analysis to what extent the above mentioned goals have been achieved so far. Finally, a model has been proposed to interlink the achievement of goals to the “Act East Policy”.