Investment destination

It is very heartening to note that an amendment to the Industrial and Investment Policy of 2019 with customised incentives has borne fruit in the form of over Rs 11,000 crore in investment proposals received by the Government of Assam in 2023. While this appears to be the right step that has yielded the right kind of desired results, it is expected that these investment proposals, when turned into reality, will bring long-term gains to the state as well as the people. As has been pointed out in a news story by this newspaper on Saturday, the Assam government in 2023 brought an amendment to the Industrial and Investment Policy of 2019 in order to make Assam a globally competitive investment destination, which in turn is expected to ignite the sustainable, inclusive, and balanced economic growth potential of the state. It is important to recall that industrial development in Assam started much ahead of several regions of the subcontinent way back in the nineteenth century with the discovery of tea, followed by the discovery of petroleum and coal. As was pointed out by a high British official during the colonial period, the Digboi-Margherita pocket was practically an industrial epicentre of India at that time. It is also pertinent to keep in mind that the per capita income of Assam was higher than that of many other states of the country even at the beginning of the first Five-Year Plan. But how and why the situation began to take a downward slide is a matter of concern, with one reason already identified by many being the constant neglect of the region by the Centre. The attitude of the Centre during the Nehru regime is worth recalling, with one of the reasons behind it being the refusal of Gopinath Bardoloi, Bishnuram Medhi, and Bimala Prasad Chaliha to accept immigrants from erstwhile East Pakistan immediately after Partition and Independence. That the Centre decided to stop all kinds of investments in the region in the aftermath of the Chinese aggression is yet another story, and the present generation must be reminded once in a while that though Assam was then the only oil-producing state, a refinery was set up in Bihar and the bulk of the crude oil was taken to that state, depriving Assam of development. In the subsequent period, though efforts were made by the state government to implement several industrial policies brought from time to time, red tape and corruption stood in the way of proper implementation of those policies. It is only in recent times that the introduction of single-window clearance, together with the path-breaking customised incentives, has paved the way for the massive investment proposals coming to the state.