THE Ministry for the Development of North East (DoNER) which was under the watch of Gen VK Singh since May this year has now gone to Dr Jitendra Singh a professor of diabetes and endocrinology, a consultant and clinical practitioner and the author of eight books, besides being a newspaper columnist. Jitendra Singh also looks after Prime Minister’s Office (Personnel-Public Grievances and Pensions) and, the Departments of Atomic Energy and Space. Mr Narendra Modi cannot be faulted for making quick changes in some key ministries. It was expected that Arun Jaitley who has been keeping indifferent health and is overburdened by two very heavy ministries – Finance and Defence would have to shed one of them. Mr Modi has very carefully hand-picked his team without seeming to be under pressure from any quarter. Mr Manohar Parikkar and Suresh Prabhu who have joined the team have good track records in their personal and political lives. Prabhu was a central minister in the Vajpayee regime and he looked after Environment and Forests. Those who have worked under him have much to say about his commitment and sincerity. Parikkar is known to have taken Goa on a different trajectory and reversed much of the evils of the Congress regime which created several Special Economic Zones (SEZs) at the cost of scarce public land.
Dr Jitendra Singh a sober person with a clean record will now be looking after a beleaguered ministry created to fast-track development in the eight North Eastern states. It was the NDA Government which created DoNER as a Department with a special focus on the North East after a study by SP Shukla and his team revealed that the North Eastern Council had failed to meet the development needs of the region. This Department was later upgraded into a full-fledged Ministry. After the appointment of VK Singh as DoNER minister there were murmurs galore as Singh had only a military perspective of the region. In the time that he held the reins of the Ministry, Singh only visited Guwahati once. Narendra Modi is a man who is famously active on social media and tweets expressing resentment on the appointment of VK Singh as DoNER minister must have caught his attention. Hence the change! But change for the sake of change alone is neither here nor there. The only Minister who made DoNER look like an important ministry was Arun Shourie. He was serious about resolving the developmental backlogs by communicating with state governments regularly. We can only hope that Jitendra Singh follows in Shourie’s footsteps.
