The Role of North Easatern Council in Economic Development

Introduction:
 In 1971, the Indian Central government set up the North Eastern Council by an act of parliament. The seven States of the North East India viz. Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, are the members of the council, with their chief ministers and governors representing them. The headquarters of the council is situated in Shillong, and functions under Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (Government of India).

Contribution to the Electricity and Education sectors:
The council has to its credit a lot of achievements mostly in electricity and education sector. The council has funded projects producing around 250 MW of electricity to reduce the region's dependency on West Bengal and Odisha. The council has also taken up major highway and bridge building projects and fund many engineering and medical colleges.

NEC has a reckonable contribution in the power sector of the NE region by way of developing the basic infrastructure. The generating capacity of the region has increased considerably due to the addition of hydro-electricity projects (HEP) and a gas based project. In the power sector, it is seen that over the last three decades, NEC has sanctioned projects having total generating capacity of 673.5 MW. The installed capacity of the region increased from 211.99 MW in 1974 to 2202.19 MW in 2002 in which NEC’s share is 33.84% of the total capacity addition during this period. The Council has also intervened in streamlining of the power transmission system and the connection of the region to the national grid. This can be said to be an important development with greater impact on the power situation of the region. Besides, investigations carried out by NEC for the development of power and multipurpose projects can be regarded as stepping stone, which can go a long way in proper harnessing of water resources.                                     

Harnessing of hydroelectric potential is a major achievement of the Council, as out of a total installed capacity of 1030 MW of hydroelectric power NEC’s contribution is around 59.15%, which is 630 MW. It is observed that during the last 30 years of NEC’s intervention the commercial as well as domestic consumption of power has shown an upward trend in the Northeast due to availability of power. However, the time and cost overrun of all the major power projects is quite high, which has delayed the expected benefit. Most of the projects took exceptionally long period of time and huge amount of money due to various unforeseen cost, which were not reflected while taking up the project. Delay in disbursement of fund is also a cause for the time and cost overrun in case of power projects.       

                                                 

Transportation

Prior to establishment of NEC, the scenario of transport and communication was not at all impressive in the Northeast. The road development in the region has been very slow due to various geographical and socio-economic reasons. During the Five Year Plans, the allocated funds for development of the transport sector in the Northeast were not adequate in comparison to the need of the region. Inadequate transport facility was a serious drawback that crippled the development of the region for a long time. As a result of the partition, the region suffered not only economically in the form of relatively high prices of consumer goods and a high cost economy but also by a sense of isolation from the rest of the country. Moreover, the railway network was also inadequate and it was noticed that three-fourths of the total volume of goods traffic to and from the rest of the country were transported by the railways. The entire network east of New Bongaigaon was in meter gauge and the problems that were faced included not only insufficient railways network but also the hurdle caused by the change of gauge. The region also faced serious problems in transporting essential commodities like cement, steel, food grains, salt, etc. 
NEC has been involved in the development of roads and waterways since its inception. Due to demand and urgent need for improvement of air connectivity, the Council has taken up up-gradation and improvement of airports in addition to road and waterway transport, from the 8th Plan onwards, based on the recommendations of a Committee of Secretaries of the Government of India