The North East (India)

Its mostly a pre-conceived notion. It’s just an idea of dismissal from the existing norm. It has been further alienated from the very owners of the mainland. But do anyone care about the genuineness of the stuff they all talk about the North East India. Yes, ‘considered’ the most ignored and alien place in India, this issue has been further deteriorated with the people’s attitude for the place. And the inhabitants has only the more reason to feel the same for the Indian mainland. What worse, the general survey will only indicate about the common man’s IQ of the NE India. Its not uncommon to find that many people will not know how many states are there in the NE label, or that still worse know the names of the city capitals. This might even prompt you to check your knowledge of the same, but as person who comes from the NE, I will say you just don’t need to know the names of states and cities. There are infact much more to know, the culture, living standards, the truth of exaggerated fear from terrorism, the tourist attractions to visit. Yes I say ‘exaggerated’ terrorism because what I have studied from the people I interacted on their opinion about the north-east India, it was simple they just know its not the safest place in India and that these are just understood issues. At once I knew about this ‘understood’ issues because to tell you the truth, in recent times I have seen more terrorist/Naxals or Maiosts attacks in the Indian Mainland than the NE. Then why this step-motherly behavior towards the NE? The main reason what I conceived would be the geographical location and terrain. Situated at one corner and surrounded by neighboring not-so-developed regions or countries, this was bound to happen with the north east India. The railways are only connected to few NE states with Assam having the major share, and hence the most progressive state in the NE. the development could not reach out to the deep-down. Further plagued by hilly terrain of the roadways, it made miserable effort for the development to occur. You could comprehend what I mean when I say when you travel from Tura to Shillong (both in Megahlaya), you need go via Guwahati. Then there are places and routes that will take shorter to reach by road then the Railways. All these instances I just implied about the small issues which add up to the create the dissatisfaction. Keep aside terrorism as failure factor for the NE, because that is one of the common issues everywhere else now. There are unhappy instances but they are not the worst part here.



Infact there are much more unexplored resources and aspects of the NE. Yes resources not only in terms of minerals, raw materials and crops, but the human resources, development resource of the untamed region. The 7 NE states are sisters waiting just the acceptance from the Fatherland India. Politically we have the support, but what the NE needs is the same treatment like all other states because it has been left aside like a scolded child. The capable human resource have been moving out of the region due to lack of opportunity and better career aspects elsewhere. This would be the case with all major locations, but since the NE is primarily deprived of major corporate development, there is very little scope for the capable and developed man-power. The tourism industry again has ample scope in NE, but then the distant from developed regions makes it a choice last in the list. The ‘Scotland of the East’ (pls google it in case you don’t know what it is…. I suppose this you should know) and the Himalayan hilly regions of Gangtok and Darjeeling have somehow survived and got promoted top in NE tourist list, but there is much to be done for these places to come to par with major attractions with the Indian Mainland. However one thing which I would like to make a special mention is that common man in the NE is by large a wealthy-at-heart person. The general concept is live life happily and make best use of your talents. They are very hard-workers and they have simple concept of living. There are landmark differences about the way of life and in treatment of common issues in the rest of India - the stringent religional biases, and gender-differences. In that terms, NE India will be a proud region and it has only more bliss to offer to its inhabitants.


Cheers
Bhola