PM Modi working to make Arunachal Pradesh a major gateway to East Asia: Jitendra Singh

Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh on Thursday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is working to make Arunachal Pradesh a major gateway to East Asia.

He said the work culture of the Northeast has seen a revolutionary transformation in the last eight years.

As a result, the minister said, now the projects in the Northeast are getting completed within a fixed timeline and the utilization of central funds is almost 100 percent.

''Every state is connected to the Union capital by railway and each of the eight states is coming up with its airport whereas Guwahati has turned into an important international airport,'' Singh said.

Inaugurating a two-day regional conference on the theme ''Bringing Citizens and Government Closer through Administrative Reforms'' here along with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, Singh said, before 2014, the North Eastern region suffered economically due to myopic policies of successive central governments.

But soon after the Modi government took over in 2014, the prime minister stated that every effort would be made to bring the region to par with the more developed areas of the country, the minister said. Singh said Prime Minister Modi is working to make Arunachal a major gateway to East Asia.

''Modern infrastructure is set up, seeing Arunachal's role regarding national security. Nature has endowed Arunachal with a lot of its treasures and the Centre is also trying to take the tourism potential of Arunachal to the whole world," he said.

Singh said that in the last eight years not only have developmental gaps been bridged successfully, but the North Eastern region has also gained psychological confidence.

The minister added that significant development in terms of road, rail and air connectivity is helping facilitate the movement of goods and persons not only across the region but also across the country.

Singh said it is only after Narendra Modi took over as prime minister that such conferences are held in the farthest northeastern states like Arunachal Pradesh as well as other hilly and backward areas to empower them in every walk of life. He said the Itanagar conference, being organized by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), comes after the national conference on e-governance held in Meghalaya in August 2019, when the 'Shillong Declaration' on e-governance was adopted to share best practices, latest technology developments and leveraging them for achieving effective governance and public service delivery.

Singh informed that the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances in collaboration with the Government of Arunachal Pradesh and the Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad has developed a District Good Governance Index, a first for North Eastern states, on the lines of the National Good Governance Index for improving the efficiency of governance across districts, according to a Personnel Ministry statement. He said DARPG also plans to collaborate with the Government of Arunachal Pradesh to develop a District Good Governance portal for monitoring the rankings of each district of the state every month and help in benchmarking performance within the state.