Letter from the Editor-in-Chief
Dear friends
August 2013
We are celebrating our Independence Day once again. While the nation prepares for its celebration, Magazines and Newspapers sit and plan their exclusive issue. We at Eastern Panorama also did the same. To mark the 67th Independence Day of India, Eastern Panorama conducted a survey taking various parameters into consideration which affect the prosperity and happiness of the society. This, we felt is important, as we were shocked by repeated remarks by our great politicians, the likes of which I quote “You can eat to your satisfaction at Rs 12 in Mumbai” and “you can eat for Rs 5 in Delhi” and yet another in our own North East where one minister said “you can eat for Rs 2.50”. Food is the first and most basic need of the society and we were shocked that our politicians cracked jokes of this nature. They were making the poorest of the poor the laughing stock. The poor became poorer and rich became richer in our independent India, which reflects a lack of good policies and programmes. Though, in the recent past, many outstanding programmes were initiated by the Government of India to eliminate poverty from the country. One such programme was Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Sadly, due to lack of proper delivery systems, most of these laudable programmes fail to give the desired results. MGNREGA is no exception. Sadly, we also do not pay much heed to the prosperity of the society. We do not measure the happiness of our own people even as a small country like Bhutan has a happiness index. Keeping this thought in mind we have run a cover story ‘Status of Development of NE States in India in the National Perspective’. Any studies of development cannot be fair unless it is conducted by experts on the subject. We from Eastern Panorama availed the expertise of Prof. P. Nayak and Prof. S. K. Mishra both from the Department of Economics, North Eastern Hills University, Shillong. Taking various parameters of prosperity such as infrastructure, industry, services and banking, human development, institutional infrastructure, privatization, employment and public finance, the ranking in terms of development in each of these sectors has been given for the entire country. It is interesting to note that in institutional infrastructure Mizoram is one state which tops in the North East and also stands third in the country. Tripura has shown excellent performance in the industry and employment, whereas Assam tops in its privatization initiatives. In public finance which includes per capita public expenses in the rural and urban areas, it is Nagaland which tops the list. Arunachal Pradesh is lagging behind in infrastructure development and Assam needs to improve in its service sector, institutional infrastructure and human resource development. The study has also reflected the contradictions in the development initiatives in the North East region which is the stumbling block in the prosperity of the region.
In this issue of Eastern Panorama, we have also spoken to a cross section of the society and presented their opinions and thoughts about independent India. Dr. Mukul Sangma, the Chief Minister, was really happy that people are more assertive which is good for democracy. Rightly so, as our democracy has survived so long and assertiveness, awareness and education will all succeed in curtailing corruption and insurgency.
In this issue, we have also run an article titled ‘Points of Difference’ by Pratap Chettri in which the facts revealed are interesting and amazing. To quote ‘780 languages are spoken in the country; 250 languages have been lost in the last 50 years; there are close to 66 scripts; Arunachal Pradesh with 90 languages. Assam with 55 languages and Gujarat with 48 languages are the three most linguistically diverse states and West Bengal having 38 languages but having 9 scripts has the maximum diversity in terms of scripts’.
Is this not really interesting? In spite of all this diversity, we are optimistic and hopeful for a united and prosperous India in the years to come.
Happy Independence Day