India's The North Eastern Region of India had been suffering an unfortunate geographical isolation and perceived psychological alienation from the rest of the country as a consequence of partition and the irrational drawing of the Radcliffe Line, when thanks to the path-breaking vision of our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji the decades old Look East Policy was metamorphosed into the more proactive Act East Policy in 2014 – thereby providing the region with a unique opportunity to reinvent itself as the hub of the country’s emerging relations with her eastern neighbours.In this regard, the Hon’ble Prime Minister has not only designated ‘Act East’ Policy as a key component of his Government’s Foreign Policy, but also explicitly mentioned that North-East India would play an important role in that ‘Act East’ Policy.

The idea is to supplement the efforts of the Govt. of India in having improved infrastructural linkage, significantly stepped up economic relations and trade, and renewed cultural links and shared heritage between North East India and the countries of South and South East Asia. The city of Guwahati was known in primordial times as Pragjyotishpur – the City of Eastern Lights. As part of the vision of the Hon’ble Prime Minister, the State Government wishes to transform Guwahati as the city at the heart of the Eastern World.

Before independence the North Eastern Region of India used to have multi-modal transportation networks (i.e.roadways, railways and riverine waterways) through the territories which are now Bangladesh and Myanmar to several ports [e.g. Chittagong, Sittwe and Yangon (then Rangoon)] as well as to what is now termed as Mainland India. Thanks to the enterprise of the British colonialists, trade from the region used to flourish; and in fact, tea and petroleum used to reach the Chittagong and Kolkata (then Calcutta) ports through the Brahmaputra-Padma-Meghna riverine waterway, as well as through railway lines passing through present-day Bangladesh. The then undivided Assam therefore used to be one of the richer provinces of the country, and had a per-capita income higher than the national average upto 1950.

With the onset of freedom and the simultaneous partition exercise, along with the creation of Burma (Myanmar) as a separate country a decade prior to that; the age-old trade routes and transportation linkages of the region were suddenly snapped rendering it land-locked. As a matter of fact, security concerns prompted the gradual conversion of the 4500 odd kilometers length of international border that the region shares with no less than five countries of the subcontinent into a fortress-like formation. The artificial closure of the primeval trade routes and transportation links with and through the neighbouring countries of South and South East Asia, along with the trade and transport bottlenecks which thwarted the region from getting properly integrated into the economic system of the Mainland India, together resulted in economic stagnation of the region with serious consequences like social strife and insurgency. The response of the then Central Government was the imposition of further trade and travel restrictions – engendering a vicious cycle of psychological disconnect, sporadic violence and extortion, and skewed development in the region. The region thus came to be looked upon through the prism of internal security.

The scenario of looking at the region from that angle underwent a paradigm shift in 2001 with the setting up of the Department of DONER, specifically for the development of the North East Region. It may be safely surmised that this occurred because the country had undergone the massive liberalization exercise in the early nineties of the last century, the fruits thereof were beginning to be harvested around that time in the frontline states, and so it was felt that development needed to trickle down even to the north-eastern corners of the nation.

Meanwhile, another policy shift of the Central Govt. occurred a decade earlier with the adoption in 1991 of the Look East Policy – whose basic objective was to take advantage of the physical proximity of the fast developing economies of East and South East Asia. Over the years, the efforts did fructify with India being accepted as one of the strategic partners of the ASEAN bloc. Yet the endeavour was not initially inclusive of North East India, as it laid stress on marine connectivity with East and South East Asia through the ports on the Bay of Bengal.

However, under a progressive chain of events a revamped Look East Policy took shape in 2007, which came to incorporate the North Eastern Region as well.

In order to capitalize on the avant-gardepolicy of the Hon’ble Prime Minister from the standpoint of the North-Eastern Region, the State Government of Assam has set up the Department of Act East Policy Affairs – with the avowed purpose of making Assam and other North-Eastern States as drivers of Government of India’s Act East Policy as key stake-holders at the ground level.