The Assam Tribune
Guwahati, Tuesday, October 26, 2004
EDITORIAL
How planning failed Assam
H N Das
The amorphous entity, we normally refer to as the Centre, has now formally acknowledged the neglect and injustice of Assam in respect of Plan allocations in the past. The Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government admitted as follows: “It is a matter of concern that regional imbalance have been accentuated by not just historical neglect but also by distortions in Plan allocations and central Government assistance. Even in the Tenth Five Year Plan, States like Bihar, Assam and UP have received per capita allocations that are much below the national average”.We have, however, been crying, for the past twenty years at least, about the discrimination and the neglect in respect of the Plan. In 1984-85 while preparing Assam’s Seventh Five Year Plan (1985-1990) as the then Planning and Development Commissioner of the Government of Assam I carried out considerable research with the object of unravelling the basic trends of the economic development process in Assam during the previous few decades. In this endeavour I was assisted by N K Barua and P B Deb. One outcome of this research was the development of a planning model which could postulate the different rates of growth per annum that would achieve corresponding reduction in the gap between the State’s per capita income (PCI) and the national average and also project the period during which the gap could be bridged.
This research brought out, for the first time, that during the entire period of planned development the rate of economic growth in Assam was much slower compared to the national average. Secondly, at constant 1970-71 prices, Assam’s PCI of Rs 50.04 was higher in 1950-51 than the average PCI of India. However, it started lagging behind since the late 1960s and by the year 1984-85. Assam’s PCI became Rs 212.9 which was lower than the all India average. This fact now looks obvious and is often quoted by economists, politicians and social leaders. But no one had an inkling about it before out research results were published. Thirdly, all along the period of planned development the per capita plan expenditure per annum in Assam upto the Sixth Five-Year Plan was lower than the national average. Only after the Seventh Plan the expenditure picked up slightly.When late Hiteswar Saikia, the then Chief Minister, took the model and the graphs to the then Prime Minister late Indira Gandhi she got a real shock. She told us that while she had always known that Assam was backward she could never imagine that it had been better off than the rest of India in the year 1950 and had slided down so much in 35 years of planned development. That year Assam’s central assistance went up by an additional Rs 100 crore. This was quite a considerable amount in those days. However, this initiative was never followed up and nothing at all was done to provide the level of investment required to lift up the rate of economic development in Assam as postulated by the model. Meanwhile, insurgency and political problems complicated the scene and government attention was diverted to other matters.
After retirement from service, in early 1995, I reworked the time series of PCI at constant 1980-81 prices and found that there was no basic change in the trends seen earlier. The newly worked out series showed that while in 1950-51 Assam’s PCI of Rs 40 was higher than the national average by 1992-93 the figure had lagged behind so much that it became Rs 271 which was less than the national average.The latest position, as worked out by the Government of India shows that while in 1950-51 Assam’s PCI was 104.1 per cent of the national average by 2002-03 it had slided down to only 55.4 per cent of the national average. What is more unfortunate is that while Assam’s PCI lost 30 percentage points in the first 40 years from 1950-51 to 1990-91 in the liberalised regime of the next 11 years from 1990-91 to 2001-02 it slipped 20 percentage points. A projection on the basis of the present growth rates of population and NDP/NSDP brings out the more ominous portent of Assam’s PCI becoming only 33.12 per cent of the national average by 2019.20. This is alarming.
When we make an inter-regional comparison in terms of PCI, the differences appear to be glaring. In 2001-02, for example, while Assam had a PCI of Rs 10,951 the national average was Rs 18,912. The highest of all States was that of Goa which was Rs 49,673. What is significant is that Assam is worse off than the other North Eastern States.According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in terms of Human Development Index (HDI), which gives a better insight into economic and social development, India’s rank was found to be 115 among 162 countries. The value of HDI for India worked out to be 0.571 against Norway’s 0.939, which happened to be the highest of all countries. A more detailed work by Government of India showed that among the Indian States the highest HDI was that of Kerala being 0.638 in 2001 against Assam’s value of 0.386 and the all India average of 0.472. Assam’s position was 14th among the 15 States for which HDI had been estimated. Bihar’s HDI was 0.367. It had the 15th and the last position.
Similar is the case with poverty. According to official Planning Commission estimates, 26.10 per cent of the country’s population was below the poverty line (BPL) in 1999-2000. Assam’s figure was 36.09 per cent. So poverty in Assam is worse than the average of all States of India.Grinding poverty is writ large on the faces of the poor in Assam’s rural areas. Emaciated bodies and anaemic looks, protruding bellies and thin limbs, worn out clothes and dilapidated shelters, all point to deprivation. The condition of the poor has not improved very much in real terms since independence. It is true that a burgeoning middle class has emerged mainly out of Government spending on development projects and programmes. But this middle class is proliferating only in the urban areas. Just a miniscule proportion of the rural population may be identified as belonging to the middle class.
It would be wrong, however, to surmise that Assam had not progressed at all during this period. In fact, it did share in the common prosperity of the country to some extent but lagged behind the national average due to a variety of reasons. The major one, of course, has been the tremendous spurt in population. Besides that the paucity of funds for investment, geographical isolation from the mainland, insurgency and its effect on the economy, lack of infrastructure and annual damages caused by flood and other natural calamities may be cited as some of the main reasons.Inspite of all the handicaps and the inadequancies agricultural production has gone up considerably. The cropped area increased by 1.56 times from 25,17,058 hectares in 1951 to 39,44,000 hectares in 1991. The food production, including cereals and oil seeds, went up from 16,60,343 tonnes in 1958-59 to 40,42,000 tonnes in 1999-2000 and to 43,22,000 in 2000-01. But at the same time the population increased at the galloping rate. It increased 3 times from 88.30 lakh in 1931 to 266.38 lakh in 2001. This partly explains why the economic condition of the masses did not improve at the same rate as in the rest of the country.
The situation is similar in most other sectors. Literacy, educational institutions, road and railway mileage, industrial production, oil extradition and refining capacity, hospitals and dispensaries, communication facilities including telephones and cell phones, creature comforts in terms of consumer goods availability and production in all other sectors have all gone up. But the rate of growth has been less than what the rest of India achieved. That is why an alternative strategy has to be found how to accelerate the development process in Assam.(The writer is former Chief Secretary, Assam).
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