SHILLONG, Dec 26: Barring Assam, the Northeastern states are yet to make a significant contribution to India’s GDP, which is more than $3 trillion, despite rapid strides on the path of development.
The GDP has made India the fifth-largest economy in the world.
The Northeast has historically been neglected by the Centre. But the attention to the region over the past few years has seen the states make some progress in farming and in the service sector.
New Delhi has been funding certain ventures but it is the responsibility of the states to ensure that the funds are utilised well to make the region a growth engine.
Development in Meghalaya, which aims to be among the top 10 Indian states in the next 10 years, has been gaining pace. But building a stable economy leveraging on the resources of the state could be tricky as industrialisation, often attracting skilled workers from outside, might affect the identity of the nature-loving people of Meghalaya.
Tourism has been contributing to the economy of the state but the scale is not enough for the people to live a life of prosperity and dignity.
In recent times, the Meghalaya government has been creating opportunities by promoting entrepreneurs in farming, cooperatives and the urban service sector. These entrepreneurs in the long run would turn from job seekers to job providers, sector experts say.
To support the first-tier or entry-level entrepreneurs or the farmers, an all-around support system has been put in place.
The FOCUS programme has been introduced to provide financial benefits along with training and aggregation of products at the farm level. About 2.7 lakh farmers have been brought under the FOCUS and FOCUS+ programmes and around 50,000 farmers or producers have been brought under the mission mode projects that focus on specific products such as the Lakadong turmeric, ginger and meat.
The Meghalaya Basin Development Authority is providing training on a package of practices, aggregation, processing and marketing facilities through community-led cooperatives promoting the service sector and allied activities. These cooperatives are the second tier in the pyramid for post-harvest services.
These cooperatives managed by some 500 integrated village cooperative societies provide employment opportunities to more than 1 lakh households.
The state government has also launched the Skills Meghalaya Programme as an umbrella scheme that augments the entrepreneurship, skilling and livelihood of the people where over 1.2 lakh youths will be provided with employment-linked skills.
The third tier involving the urban areas is attended to by the PRIME programme.
To date, more than 1,500 entrepreneurs have been registered, trained and provided with funding. They are mentored and nurtured at state-of-the-art incubation centres in Tura and Shillong and eight more such centres are under construction.
In the information technology service sector, the Shillong IT Park has already provided jobs to about 1,500 youths with 4,000 more jobs in the pipeline under the second phase.
The story of Catherine Dohling underlines the effectiveness of the three-tier structure.
Dohling deals with spices and ethnic cooking items. She focuses on procuring these products from cooperative societies, which in turn get them from the farmers at the ground level. She not only sells these products locally or elsewhere in the country but exports them. She has been to multiple international food shows for showcasing her products which have earned a name for Meghalaya.
