PM Modi’s one year in office: hopes and broken dreams for Northeast

Guwahati: It has been one year since Narendra Modi ‘stormed’ in New Delhi. There were fanfare and hope. But now they feel the broken promises are too heavy. Many in the north-eastern states were extremely hopeful that the Narendra Modi government would at least settle a few issues which the previous government could not do. “The art of speech won him many votes,” somebody rightly said. But he has so far failed to develop on many promises. There are plenty of issues on which the BJP played the game of gaining votes. If Modi had promised to solve the illegal infiltrators’ problem, the BJP government assured the people of Assam that the Lower Subansiri Hydropower Project will be scrapped for the environmental safety. Most of the people in the Northeast appeared dejected. For many it’s the broken promises and befooling the people of the region. Some even termed the Modi government as ‘more dangerous’ than the Congress government for the NE region. The Modi government is also a threat to the indigenous people, many felt.. “I would say there is complete opposite of what Narendra Modi had promised to the people of the state. Now, everybody has realized that it was only meant for the election and even now what the promises are being made is for the sake of the forthcoming 2016 state assembly polls. There is no holistic approach in works of development in the region,” said Assam spokesperson of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Manoram Gogoi. He also said that the BJP’s religious polarization is another threat which the people of the state have got during the last one year. Gertrude Lamare, a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi who hails from Shillong, says that the Modi government has from the beginning exploited a patronizing rhetoric when talking about the North East, and promotes itself as a saviour of the region which has been disadvantaged and marginalized by the Congress administration. “Yes, the Union Budget reveals that more money is being pumped into the region but we should also be wary of the kind of ‘development’ Modi is trying to push through. So far, there has been a flood of environmental clearances in the region, allowing MNCs as well as the Government to seize community lands to establish extractive industries and hydro-power projects. This will not only result in severe ecological damage but also gravely threatens the indigenous communities’ autonomy over their land,” she said. Therefore, Modi’s development agenda only serves industrialists and local elites and not really the common people. This Government is hence not at all different from its antecedent, the Congress and in fact, it appears to be much more dangerous, she felt. Source: Two Circles News