West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu said that the United Front government and the Steering Committee should consider a proposal from the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry for the development of the north-eastern region as it was necessary for the countrys progress.
Chamber president H P Barooah has also proposed that a broader body embracing the entire region, something like a regional planning commission guided by the planning commission at the Centre, should be set up.
Addressing the chambers 143rd annual general meeting yesterday, Barooah said that there need be no conflict with the governments at the state level as they would be represented in this regional planning commission and would stand to benefit directly from such an exercise in regional planning.
A common task that faces the Eastern as well as the North-Eastern region is to project to the rest of India the simple fact that the stagnation and decline of the Eastern and North-Eastern region hurts the rest of India as much as it hurts them. The dangerous symptoms of the spreading cancer are only too evident in the recent development in Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Manipur and Tripura, said Barooah. The Chief Minister said, this region has suffered due to the neglect of successive Central governments culminating in a situation in which other regions of the country have benefited from their favourable disposition. A time has come for us to focus on the collaborative efforts by the states of the Eastern and North-Eastern regions.
Jyoti Basu spoke of not hurting the domestic industry for the sake of liberalisation and global competition.
While we should not cut ourselves adrift from the global economy, it should not be at the cost of the destruction of our core sector industries built up in the public sector.
Barooah had proposed that a special capital fund should be set up by the state government for revival of the sick units. The amount could come from the money the government spends to keep these sick units operational under government management.
Basu expressed his dismay that a market was being created for 10-15 per cent of the population while the rest face stagnated or deteriorating standard of living. There is an urgent need to review some of the policy orientations of the past which created regional disparities and massive unemployment, said Basu.
Basu offered some extracts from the Human Development Report, 1996 of the UN:
i) The world has become more polarized and the gulf between the rich and the poor of the world has widened further.
ii) Even the industrial countries still have major human development concerns millions of people live in constant insecurity menaced by crime, drugs, pollution, unemployment and homelessness.
iii) During the whole process of libelarisation, adjustment and privatisation, concern for the poor was pushed into the background. Policy makers assumed that even if poverty increased in the short term, this was the price to be paid for long term stability and growth.
Basu said, we all know that this has not happened anywhere in the world including India. The trickle-down theory has not worked.