Growth in Northeast has been transformational: Scindia

Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is mostly in news as the communications minister, is equally engaged with his other portfolio — minister of development of north eastern region (DoNER). In a conversation with Gulveen Aulakh and Nivedita Mookerji last week at his office, Scindia highlighted that about %4.48 trillion investments have been committed to the northeast region, which is growing much faster than India’s economy. Edited excerpts:

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At a time when reform is in the air, what is the way forward for the DoNER ministry, almost 25 years after it was formed?

■ From 2014 to 2025, the Prime Minister’s vision was not only ensuring development of Uttarpoorvi Bharat and Ashta Lakshmi, but also ensuring that the Northeast leads India’s paradigm of development and progress, both internal to the country and external to the world. Over the last 11 years, you had close to about 10 per cent of GBS (gross budgetary support) constituting roughly about %4,800 crore of investment per year into the Northeast. That number has now grown to %1.02 trillion a year. The disbursements and devolution to the Northeast have grown to almost 6 trillion over this period. Now those are transformational sums of investment. The Prime Minister’s vision was that the Northeast must become the engine of our economic growth, and in the last 18 months, my experience has been extraordinary. Where the world is growing at 2.5 percent GDP growth rate, India has clocked 8.2 per cent in the last quarter, roughly 6.8 per cent on a decadal growth rate, which means that we are 2.5 times, or close to three times the world average. As for the Northeast, the decadal compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for all eight states is 10 to 12 per cent. So, the Northeast is growing at almost 1.6x times that of India, and close to 5x times the world.

Do you think this pace of growth will continue?