How India’s partition affected northeast? EAM S Jaishankar explains
Apr 29, 2024
New Delhi, April 29 (ANI): Describing Northeast India as a “big beneficiary” of dramatic improvement in India-Bangladesh ties, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that the first few decades after the partition of India, in a number of ways, stunted the growth of the region. Addressing at interactive session on Northeast India’s integration with Southeast Asia and Japan at Kirori Mal College, he said, “The partition of India in many ways broke or undermined a lot of the natural connectivity that the northeast India had enjoyed and would have enjoyed otherwise. The first few decades after our partition, the levels of growth that Northeast India should have seen, we actually saw that stunted because they did not enjoy all the advantages which many other parts of India had, simply because there were political barriers, administrative issues and therefore, in a way, what we are seeing now is something that should have come much earlier if history had been kinder to us. So when I look in terms of what has changed, I always tell people, for India to Look East, Delhi should first Look East and see the Northeast. It is when the potential and the possibilities of the Northeast are fully appreciated. If you look at the last decade, Northeast India has actually been a big beneficiary of this dramatic improvement in India-Bangladesh ties, when we did the land boundary agreement in 2015, once things settled down, there was a new level of trust and confidence between India and Bangladesh.
