Six new projects

The Centre’s consideration of six projects for the north-eastern region worth over Rs 1,200 crore must be seen as a welcome move, especially in the backdrop of the region’s craving for developments in various fields, ranging from healthcare to connectivity and tourism, in the past few decades. As reported by this newspaper in the lead news story of its Saturday edition, the six projects under consideration by the Union Government also await detailed and/or modified proposals from the respective states. These projects have been considered under the Prime Minister’s Development Initiative for the North East Region (PM DevINE) Scheme, and all the state governments concerned are now required to submit detailed project reports as early as possible. Taking a look at these six projects, one finds that they include the establishment of Dedicated Services for the Management of Paediatric and Adult Hematolymphoid Cancers at the Dr. B. Borooah Cancer Institute, a premier cancer treatment and research facility in Guwahati. Cancer being a major disease afflicting a large section of people across the region, it is imperative that the establishment of this facility be done at the earliest. It is important to note that the Dr. B. Borooah Cancer Institute, which was established through a public initiative taken in 1956 by a handful of farsighted citizens of Guwahati, has, since November 2017, been taken over by the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, as a grant-in-aid institute and as a unit of the Tata Memorial Centre (Mumbai). Among the five other projects are the construction of an Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) at Anini in Arunachal Pradesh, the development of a tourist facility each at Shillong Peak and Sohra (Cherrapunji) in Meghalaya, a multi-speciality hospital at Chumukedima in Nagaland, gap-funding for the proposed medical college at Sichey in Sikkim, and the establishment of a campus of the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs in Shillong. All these projects, once completed, would definitely trigger a series of socio-economic benefits. These include making available government healthcare facilities, which would also create livelihood opportunities for a large number of local youth. While it is for the respective state governments to expedite the process of preparing and submitting the DPRs, it is also equally important for the state governments to ensure that the projects are implemented within the prescribed deadline and the work is carried out to the best of quality. Delay in the implementation of projects is an old ailment from which the Northeastern region has been suffering. The never-ending process of constructing four-lane highways in the region is the most glaring example of this malady, for which the government agencies concerned are to be solely blamed.