On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a very significant statement. He said in a post on his X handle that the Northeast was no longer the periphery but the pulsating heart of India’s growth story. This statement, however, is not exclusive to the Prime Minister, but it is what Union Minister for Development of the North-eastern Region, Jyotiraditya Scindia, had mentioned in a recent article which he wrote. In his X handle post, the Prime Minister shared this article written by Scindia, in which the latter had underscored the transformation and growing importance of Arunachal Pradesh in the nation’s development journey. Arunachal Pradesh, which for the first twenty-five years after India attained independence remained a secluded, restricted and out-of-all-bounds kind of territory,has since then struggled to keep pace with the rest of India in all areas. A strategically situated state which shares about 1129 km of international boundary with China, Arunachal Pradesh is a glaring example of the Centre’s neglect, as also of how regional disparity was kind of a rule rather than an exception in India during several decades of rule by a particular political party. That the frontier state is a story of transformation in recent years is evident from the Prime Minister’s statement, in which he said that from new airports to empowered SHGs, from connectivity to creativity, Arunachal Pradesh mirrors the spirit of Viksit Bharat. Modi also reiterated what Scindia had also said of the Northeast, that ‘Ashtalakshmi’ – as the PM had described the eight states of the region – was no longer a distant frontier but a vibrant hub of India’s progress. Looking at the importance the present regime in Delhi has given to the Northeast, one must describe it as unprecedented. While almost every development project taken up during the previous regime had suffered from failure of completion despite several deadline extensions, the present government has not only completed each one of them but has also taken up several more. The most recent is the completion of a 51.38 km vital railway link to the Mizoram capital, one which connects Bairabi (on the Assam border) to Sairang (on the outskirts of Aizawl) and has been described as the latest engineering marvel of the Indian Railways. Comprising 48 tunnels and 55 major bridges, bridge number 144 is said to be the second-tallest pier bridge in India. Another very important project completed in record time is the Sela Tunnel in Arunachal Pradesh. Situated at an altitude of 13,000 feet on the road connecting Tezpur (Assam) to Tawang and built at a cost of Rs 825 crore, the Sela Tunnel has provided all-weather connectivity to Tawang, thus boosting the preparedness of the Armed Forces and augmenting the socio-economic development of the border region. Some of the other major development projects which are inching towards completion in the region include the Imphal railway link and two bridges on the Brahmaputra (Guwahati and Dhubri) in Assam, to name a few.