As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called a meeting of all the Chief Ministers on December 7 to discuss the new institution in place of the outgoing Planning Commission, the Indian Mountain Initiative (IMI) has written an open letter to the PM through the Secretary of the Planning Commission for his consideration, making out a case for retaining the special category status of the 11 mountain States of India and a greater voice to the States.
The letter has also stressed on the constitution of a Ministry for Mountain Development to look after their overall and speedy development. In the letter, the IMI president and NTPC Chair and Professor, Centre for Public Policy, Doon University, RS Tolia cites the PM’s Independence Day speech in which Modi had acknowledged that the formation of Planning Commission was based on circumstance and the needs of those times while the present national and global scenarios have changed with Govts not being the centre of economic activities anymore.
Appreciating Modi’s emphasis on developing the States for national progress, Tolia writes, “like in the past the case of the mountain regions and mountain people has always remained largely unheard and neglected.
We plead the PM to specially look at the genesis and growth of the 11 mountain States. Presently, 11 of the 29 Indian State are mountain States and to be fair to all the mountain people of India, five more States falling under the Western Ghats nomenclature also have grounds to be recipients of special consideration.”
The letter is accompanied by a monograph on behalf the mountain States which explains why the 11 mountain States deserve to be the rightful recipients of special treatment and consideration even in the new scheme of financial dispensation that might get carved out as has been the case so far.
Tolia states, “These 11 mountain states and the five Western Ghat States/regions deserve the existing financial and other policy related support of the nation. In passing the special status accorded to the 11 mountain States has had serious politico-economic connotations. The issue of according special category status must not be mixed up with the creation of new States, as has happened in the case of Bihar and Jharkhand or Telanaga and Andhra Pradesh, which really has made some finance-centric arguments alone.”
The letter to the PM recommends strengthening and activating the National Development Council, according it a Constitutional underpinning as recommended by the Sarkaria Commission, more frequent NDC meetings and making the Chief Ministers its permanent members.
Accordingly highest attention to resource position and infrastructural development of mountain States, a Ministry for Mountain Development should be created either by expanding the domain and responsibilities of Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region by constituting afresh to look after the 11 mountain States and the Western Ghat regions. As December 11 happens to be the International Mountain Day it would be a fitting recognition of the special need and status of the mountain regions of India.