NEW DELHI, Nov 18 ? Lopsided policies of Government of India in dealing with the north eastern region (NER), lack of sincere efforts to understand the problems, bureaucratic indifferences, deficiency of visionary political leaders coupled with the menaces of insurgency and illegal infiltration from Bangladesh have aggravated the problems of the region.
These were some of the opinions expressed by panel of experts comprising retired Governors, army officials, security analysts, who have had long stints in the region and senior journalists at an interaction on North-east organised by the prestigious Observer Research Foundation (ORF) here today.
Some of the speakers included senior journalist and director, Centre for Development and Peace Studies, Wasbir Hussain, former Governor of Nagaland and Manipur, ON Shrivastava, former Governor of Manipur, Lt. Gen (retd) VK Nayar besides deputy Editor of The Hindu, Siddharth Varadarajan.
The day-long interaction saw the speakers share their experiences of serving in the region and their perception of the various problems plaguing the region. However, the consensus that emerged was that the Centre?s policies towards the region were faulty and akin to fire fighting missions mainly owing to the lack of sincerity on part of the bureaucrats to understand the problems, an indifferent political leadership, rampant corruption.
Speakers wondered as to why the Government of India did not have a policy to tackle the insurgency problems as evident by the flip-flop in dealing with the NDFB, the long delay in initiating talks with the overground organisations like the Apunba Lup, the failure to recognise that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has failed to serve its purpose, as well as turning a blind eye to gross misuse of funds pumped into the region.
?If there are problems in the north-eastern part of India, there are ways out too. What is necessary is a genuine attempt to understand the psyche of the people in the area and formulation of a set of institutionalised response mechanism to address issues in the region on state-to-state basis, besides a set of broad and accepted policy formulations,? said Hussain.
?One thing that is of outmost importance for New Delhi is to understand the situation on the ground in the area in the correct perspective, get the Central administration a bit closer to the region and by appointing hand-picked officers to man key sectors in administration in the area,? he further suggested.
Asserting that illegal migration into the region could not be wished away, Lt.General (retd) Nayar said it was regrettable that there has been no Government response to resolve the problem.
He suggested that a commission should be set up to examine the whole gamut of issues connected with the problem of illegal migration including the viability of the IMDT Act, which he said should be scrapped and replaced with the Foreigners Act.
It has to be recognised that influx from Bangladesh would continue and therefore a decision has to be taken and the Accord signed with the agitators must be honoured. He stressed that the cut-off date of 1971 must become sacrosanct. He suggested that the proposal of issuing work permits must be examined.