[Dec 2007, Volume 4 Quarterly Issue] Pdf File size - The IIPM Think ...

Baharul Islam
Chairman & CEO, South Asia Development
Gateway, & Member, High Power Committee on
International Cooperation,
Government of Mizoram
An Alternative Integrated Development Perspective For The
Peripheral Regions: The Case Of Barak Valley In Northeast India
"Make no little plans; they
have no magic to stir men's
blood...Make big plans, aim
high in hope and work."
-Daniel H. Burnham
Background
It is a legitimate desire for any region like
Barak Valley in Assam (specifically Cachar,
Karimganj & Hailakandi districts) to
mobilize its intellectual resources and
technical expertise including those in the
diasporas, to plan for growth, equity and
economic development. At the dawn of the
third millennium various regions and communities
around the world have weathered
the storm of economic and social crises
that have been the order of the day ever
since the mid seventies. However, due
many reasons, social, political and economic,
Barak Valley region doesn’t have
any such perspective plan. Sons and daughters
of the valley who hold various high
professional positions in India and abroad
often feel a deep urge to work for the development
of the area but in the absence
of any institutional civil society platform,
such desires remain isolated. Looking
ahead into the coming century, it is with
great optimism that some groups of people
from the valley have started to think of
breaking down the developmental processes
into discrete but technically feasible
objectives, the pronouncements-cum-mission
objectives of an integrated socio-economic
development plan for the valley.
The South Asia Development Gateway
early 2007, undertook a mission to incorporate
an Integrated Development Plan
(IDP) for this region. It is to elaborate,
propose and initiate such an exercise within
the civil society and research platforms
such as India Economy Review (IER), I
take this opportunity to put forward some
of the potential plans that we can put together
to develop the region. A sweeping
look at the objectives of various national
plans like Vision 2020 around the world
may give a critical insight into how such
plans are formulated nationally in the strategic
sense: they were measured against
the background of the present situation,
and strategies were designed to attain the
national goals. Despite its constraints,
Barak Valley has a lot more opportunities
than we usually bother to decipher and
indeed, rapid economic growth can only
be achieved if our aspiration gap incites a
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