Regional Disparity and Sustainable Development in North-Eastern States of India: A Policy Perspective

Regional disparity is one of the obstacles for ensuring sustainable development in India particularly north –eastern regions. To accelerate the growth amongst regions the Central government as well as state government have launched several special schemes besides the Central Ministries have been mandated to allocate 10% of their plan funds for the development of the NE Region. Apart from stepping up public investment, both the Central and the State Governments are taking proactive steps towards creating an enabling environment for private investment in productive sectors. There is no scope for primary data in the present study however, the paper is solely based on analysis of secondary data particularly poverty estimates for North East Regions for 2004-05 & 2009-10 based on Tendulkar Methodology and the Press note of Planning Commission on Poverty Estimates, 2009-10. The results reveal that there are regional disparities mainly in context to income, poverty, investment and per capita state net domestic products among eight states of NERs. Although the central government has given more attention to develop all the regions of North-east of India yet many efforts need to be focussed to remove the existing regional disparities. Obviously, the average growth rate of State gross domestic product as well as the state net domestic product is comparatively less than the country level over the period of time from 2004-05 to 2010-11 (at constant price 2004-2005) but surprisingly, the growth rate of these two economic indicators (GSDP & NSDP) of few states like Sikkim (18.23%, 15.34%) and Mizoram (11.65%, 12.22%) are extremely higher than India level (10.73 %, 10.49%) respectively. The significant change has been noticed during the period of time that the territory sector leading ahead followed by primary sector and manufacturing sector in the composition of Gross State Domestic Product of NER states. The paper has attempted to measures the various central government assisted projects and their impacts on development which in turns caused regional disparities. The policy has also been formulated and recommended not only for balanced development but also and attaining sustainable development come across in the regions.