With India pursuing Look East Policy aggressively, the Northeast is gearing up to make best of the emerging opportunities.
By Peter Alex Todd/ Pinaki Das
Agartala/Guwahati, Oct 8 : With India pursuing "Look East Policy" aggressively, the Northeast is gearing up to make best of the emerging opportunities.
Agartala recently hosted a conference titled 'North East India - A gateway to Southeast Asia: Prospects for infrastructure development'.
The resolution adopted at the end of the conference emphasised the need to build infrastructure on a war-footing and establishment of the Transnational Highway for connecting the Northeast with the South East Asian nations.
Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said the Sate's natural, mineral and human resources cannot be properly exploited, until the State's basic physical infrastructure is properly developed.
Department of Northeastern Region (DONER) Secretary Dr Sushma Singh said: "Power, road and waterways are the key areas of Infrastructural development. The people are also interested and want to collaborate. I think things are looking up."
Almost coinciding with the event in Agartala, Guwahati hosted an IT Conference where major Information Technology players such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro participated with an aim to integrate the Northeastern states with the rest of the country through public and private participation in the IT sector.
Representatives from all the Northeastern states, including Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya participated.
Rahul Saikia, a student, said: "As a student of this region, opportunities are very limited. So, this is a very good effort on the part of Telecom and NASCOM, to bring such conference here and provide us the opportunity to have a look how the things are carried."
Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Commerce, said: "The Central Government has remained concerned only with the security. The connectivity over here is not good in means of internet connectivity, airport connectivity. There are many drawbacks and we hope that in next two to three years, we would show a massive development in these fields."
Pradeep Nath, Executive President of the Enterprise Solution SIFY Ltd., said: "There is a lot of potential (in the Northeast). We have the right kind of people. We have enough number of engineering colleges and therefore we have lot of scope to start that business and make it profitable."
ANI