One interesting positive fall-out of the phenomenal expansion of Indian and Chinese economies is the massive driving force it is adding to the global world economy. But what interest me is rather the specific impacts this expansion is having on economies of countries as remote as that of the Dutch.

One current active research right now among economists working on the Dutch economy is the windfall effects the expansion of Indian and Chinese economies as providing their economy. In fact, this expansion is considered to be a major growth factor of the Dutch economy.

The Contrast: As a citizen living in this part of the country, what really puts me into dizziness is why a part of the country has failed to capitalise on India’s expansion while countries as far as Holland are reaping benefits out of the expansion.

This is where we should be pondering on the relative preparedness of an economy to garner benefits from modern era development. Holland’s had been an economy with a strong industrial base looking for an opportunity for generating next push for growth.

But the opposite has been the case in the case of the Northeast. Here we should be applying our collective mind on what went wrong in this part of the country.

In understand that much has been written and talked about the whys of relative underdevelopment here, but most has been in frameworks borrowed from elsewhere. It is time we endeavour to appreciate the regional realities in contextual terms.

The Context: One very consequential reality with strong developmental implications is the very geographical structure of the region. This has had many negative implications, given the policy approach of the country.

First, the region had long historical, cultural and economic relationships with the countries of South East Asia. Now this relationship was completely and abruptly negated without any putting in its place when the independent India barred any integrative (read trade) relationships to continue.

Secondly, the chicken-neck geographical relationship with the rest of India had made it impossible for the genuinely economically integrative relationships to emerge.

Thirdly, the region has got inherent geographical structures uniquely different from the rest of the country, and which make the economic rational emerging from outside the region non-workable in it.

The resultant effects of these realities and their interaction with the national and regional policies have been critical. One very serious negative effect has been the non-emergence of any type of activity feeding on the regional or neighbouring area demands.

This could not emerge for the geographical link, given the state of transport infrastructure, with the rest of the country was such to cause scale economies impossible to emerge while at the same time the neighbours were locked out.

This ultimately made the traditional activities to decline with time while at the same time the new ones were made uneconomic to flourish. Still further, the lock-out of the neighbours from having economically integrative relationships with the region had debarred from any positive border effects of trade to emerge in the region. These had locked the region in a warp of development.

Now quite unfortunately for all of us, the regional articulation for her own development has been a scenario of time-serving rather than for genuine development keeping the contextual realities in mind. This has now become manifestly evident in every sector of the economy.

The region had never thought of the necessity of evolving strong economically integrative relationships within.

On the other hand, it had all along thought of integrating with the chicken-neck-connected part of the country. This could be because of the imposing national policy of barring the region from indulging in any kind of economically integrative relationships with the once closed neighbours.

Whatever it is, the consequence has been that the economic integration with the rest of the country has failed to provide the kind of positive externalities we expect from any economic interaction.

Even within the region, the absence of a realisation for the necessity of stronger within region economic relationships led to non evolution of an appropriate transport and communication policy for the region.

The Result: Now the above are not ingredients for capitalising on the kind of growth India has experienced in recent years. But this speaks volumes on how unprepared and dis-prepared the region has been for development in modern times.

The region is neither in the past nor in the present.