The Northeast

To test its approach, the SELCO Foundation sought challenging environments. SF had begun its work around its home base in Bengaluru in India’s relatively well-developed south. However, the Foundation soon began to branch out to other parts of India, particularly India’s Northeastern states. The Northeast encompassed a diverse geography and demography area that was historically underdeveloped. The Foundation reasoned that if interventions could go to scale in the Northeast, they could be applicable in a wide variety of locales – in India and beyond.

For most Indians, the Northeast represented a distant and unchartered region. The Northeast consisted of seven states (often called the seven sisters) of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.1The region was physically connected to the rest of India through a narrow, 22-kilometer-wide land corridor that ran between Bangladesh and Nepal, a strip of land known as ‘the chicken neck’. Ninety-two percent of the region bordered on foreign countries (China, Myanmar, Bhutan, Bangladesh) and there was no outlet to the sea – the closest Indian port was Kolkata, more than 1,500 kilometers overland through India. In the past, the region was frequently referred to as the frontier – geopolitically strategic, but remote from much of regular Indian life.

Internally, the region was difficult to traverse, the road system was underdeveloped, and those roads that had been built were generally poorly maintained in the face of a challenging climate. The major natural feature of the region is the Brahmaputra River that carried away the melt from the Himalayas and excess water from the region’s high rainfall. The river and its tributaries flooded annually, bringing fertile soils to farmlands. But regularly, the floods exceeded the nearby plains and engulfed villages and roadways. The flatlands around the Brahmaputra were surrounded on all sides by hilly terrain (the foothills of the Himalayas) that constituted about two-thirds of the area. The region’s rain patterns, combined with the terrain, meant that landslides were a frequent occurrence, further complicating life and travel in the region.

The demanding geography of the Northeast fed into the separation among the various demographic groups that lived there. The region was home to 46 million people who spoke 220+ languages. The area also was home to over two-thirds of India’s “scheduled tribes,” ethnic groups that are designated by the government the most disadvantaged socially and economically. The variety of ethnic groups meant that inhabitants, even those that were geographically close, could have significantly different cultural practices and expectations.

In terms of resources, the region had many natural assets. The Northeast featured deposits of various fossil fuels including coal, natural gas, and oil. Assam was the home for a significant tea industry whose products were exported throughout the world. The rain and soil combined for horticultural plenty -- pineapples, oranges, kiwis, bananas, and apples were all grown in the region. Spices such as turmeric, ginger, and cardamom proved to be cash crops for farmers. A particular type of silkworm that creates cocoons that can be spun into a dense, yet breathable silk fabric (Eri silk) was exclusive to the region.  Staples and legumes were grown in the flatlands for sustenance.

Economically, the region bore the results of previous enterprises that placed heavy investment in the extractive and plantation sector and produced few linkages, backward or forward, to rest of the economy of the country or other parts of the Northeast.2 With few large-scale manufacturing or service employers, a vast proportion of the population worked in the informal sector of the economy. Banks and other financial institutions were sparse across the region, leading to a high rate of unbanked inhabitants. Literacy rates were in line with the rest of India, but the region lacked institutions of higher learning or vocational training, forcing the ambitious to leave the region to receive advanced training. While GDP had grown during the period before the pandemic, growth rates in the region lagged behind the rest of India, resulting in the Northeast contributing an even smaller share of the nation’s economy.