All Northeast states failing to meet expenditure targets for projects under the North East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme—Other Than Road Infrastructure (NESIDS-OTRI) for the first quarter of the current financial year paints a grim picture of the failure of the NE states to build capacity in project execution. This newspaper exposed in its Thursday edition that as of June 2, 2025, the NE states could not spend even 25% of the targeted expenditure committed in their expenditure plan under the scheme for the first quarter of 2025-26. Ironically, there is no dearth of funds for implementation of the projects approved under the scheme, as it is fully funded by the central government. It defies logic when NE states are resource-starved and have been infrastructure-deficient, and funds provided by the central government exclusively for the region for infrastructure development remain unutilised. The chronic problem of poor utilisation of development funds held up a mirror to a systemic gap that remained unaddressed despite the fact that it is discussed in routine review meetings of the Ministry of Development of the Northeastern Region and at parliamentary standing committee meetings, and recommendations are made for removing this bottleneck. As the primary responsibility of executing the NESDIS projects and monitoring the progress lies with the state governments, fix the accountability on officials and employees of the states. The DoNER Ministry too closely monitors the progress of these projects, which speaks volumes about the oversight mechanism dovetailed into the scheme. Officials of the Ministry and the North Eastern Council carry out inspections of the selected projects on a regular basis, while the Ministry has set up Field Technical Support Units in all eight NE states, which regularly interact with project implementing agencies and maintain and update the database of projects and also carry out inspections of the ongoing projects. The ministry also issued a Standard Operating Procedure in February 2024 for engagement of the Project Quality Monitors/Third Party Technical Inspection Units. The SOP stipulates that the projects costing up to Rs 20 crore are to be inspected by the PQMs, and for bigger infrastructure projects, with a project size more than Rs 20 crore, the government engineering colleges in NER have been empanelled as third-party technical inspection agencies for monitoring of NESDIS projects. Persistence of the chronic problem of poor fund utilisation calls even after one year since the issuance of the SOP calls for a review of the monitoring and oversight mechanism and makes accountability central to the scheme guideline. The NESIDS-OTRI component of the NESIDS created a huge opportunity to create infrastructure for primary and secondary healthcare, primary and secondary education, water supply, solid waste management, industrial development, civil aviation, sports, telecom, etc., and projects sized between Rs 5 crore and Rs 50 crore are considered for sanction. NE states moved the central government that the two-stage process of sanctioning of projects under NESDIS-OTRI—the first stage for approval of the concept note and the second stage for approval of the Detailed Project Report (DPR)—caused a lot of delay. This led to revision of the guideline for administration of the scheme, and the ministry agreed to single-stage project approval but with strings attached. The revised guidelines issued in July 2024 state that if the state government chooses to propose approval of a project at one go, they can get the DPR prepared at their own expense, which is to be reimbursed only if the project is approved by the competent authority for implementation. The onus of securing timely approval of the project lies with the state government, and it must ensure that all requisite documents, including the DPR, executive summary, and necessary clearances, are expeditiously submitted for due approval by the competent authority without delay. Delay in project execution leads to time and cost overruns, which render many projects unviable for implementation. Delay in submission of utilisation certificates leading to delay in release of subsequent installments is also a perennial problem gripping project execution in the region. Routine review of these problems without perceptible changes in ground-level delivery serves no purpose. When the problems remain unaddressed at the bureaucratic level, it is incumbent upon the ministers concerned of the respective state government or chief ministers to intervene and issue strict directions, after a thorough review, to pull out all the stops in the execution of the approved projects. Target dates for project completions are set only after considering all possibilities, including reduced window periods due to heavy monsoon rainfall for projects involving construction. Therefore, failure to meet the target dates in project execution is seen as administrative gaps that are either overlooked or deliberately ignored due to systemic inertia. When the central government has pushed for bridging the infrastructure gaps between the region and the rest of the country, NE states must act decisively to break through the systemic inefficiencies and expedite infrastructure project execution.