By Our Reporter
Shillong: At an interactive session with students of IIM Shillong, Union Minister of State for Rural Development, Agatha Sangma, made a significant disclosure. She said one of the biggest challenges she faces is when people of her constituency demand that they be given a BPL card as a right.
“This is because we in India have incentivized poverty. People feel that the BPL card can get them entitlements like free housing, toilets and food,” she said.
A student asked whether reservation in its present form is the way forward. Sangma said that there is a case for reviewing the Constitution and looking at the economic status of a family while granting reservation.
However, she also said that reservation today is too strong an agenda to be removed completely but suggested other incentives for the economically deprived.
On the point of development at the cost of the environment, she said there are areas in India where the environment is lost forever but in the North East it can still be retrieved. She proposed eco-tourism as a model for economic growth while simultaneously protecting the environment.
Another question posted was that people in Delhi associate the North East with ‘momos’. Hence, Agatha Sangma being a popular name in Delhi University and also brand ambassador of the North East has the onus to create awareness about the region in Delhi and elsewhere. To this Sangma said that all IIM students who have spent time in Shillong should also become ambassadors for the region.
The Union Minister also agreed to collaborate with IIM Shillong in the areas of research and monitoring of the implementation of schemes of her ministry. When told that the biggest problem to collaboration is the lack of accessibility to ministers, Sangma said, “I am very accessible.”