Insurgency Free Prosperous North East

• North-east is very important for our country from the aspects of security.
• Our aim is to end all disputes in the Northeast by 2022 and usher in a new era of peace and development in the Northeast in 2023.
• India has made efforts to establish peace by enriching the dignity, culture, language, literature and music of the Northeast.
• We believe that development cannot happen without peace, and if employment, health, education and home and electricity for everyone are needed, then these cannot be achieved by picking arms.

For the North-East region, the Union Home Minister has identified 3 objectives:

1. The first objective is to preserve and protect its dialects, languages, dance, music, food, and culture and to create attraction for it all across India.
2. The second is to end all disputes in the Northeast and make it a peaceful region.
3. And the third important objective is to make the Northeast a developed region and try to bring it back to par with the level of contribution made in pre-independence GDP.

All-round Development of North East:

The Government of India is committed to making the North East an economic hub connecting Southeast Asia under the Act East Policy.

• The Government of India has spent a total amount of Rs. 2 lakh 65 thousand 513 crores from the year 2014 to March 2021 for the development of various infrastructure projects in the North-East region.

• In comparison to the 13th Finance Commission, the 14th Finance Commission has given 251 per cent more Central taxes.
• At the same time, in comparison to the 13th Finance Commission, the 14th Finance Commission, has given 183 per cent more funds.
• The budget of the DONER Ministry has also increased by 65 per cent in 2019-20 as compared to 2014-15.
• In January 2020, as per the direction given in the NEC by the Union Home Minister, a very important decision was taken by the DONER Ministry and for focused development of the deprived areas, deprived/neglected sections of society and emerging priority areas, under the existing schemes of NEC, 30 percent of the allocation of NEC has been earmarked for new projects.
• Under this, 54 projects worth Rs. 214 crore were approved during 2020-21 in the Northeastern states.
• In the 13th Finance Commission, NEC allocated a budget of 3449 crores in comparison in the 14th Finance Commission a budget of 5348 crores was allocated. This is an increase of about one and a half times.

Major Agreements of the Northeast

NLFT Tripura Agreement:

• The agreement was signed on 10 August 2019 in the presence of the Union Home Minister.
• Immediately thereafter 88 cadres surrendered with 44 weapons in the surrender ceremony held on 13.08.2019.
• As per the MoU, for the overall development of the tribals of Tripura, the Government of Tripura will be given a Special Economic Development Package (SEDP) of Rs.100 crore by the Government of India for a period of five years.
• From this package Rs. 100 crore, Rs. 40 crore, the amount has already been released to Tripura during the financial year 2020-21 and as per the agreement, the rest amount of Rs.60 crore will be provided to Tripura in the next three year period (2021-22 to 2023-24).

Bru Accord:

• For permanent settlement of 6959 Bru families (37,136 persons) in Tripura with a financial package of about Rs. 661 crore Government of India, Government of Tripura and Government of Mizoram with representatives of Bru migrants on 16.01.2020 signed this historic agreement in the presence of Union Home Minister.
• As per the agreement, each resettled Bru family will be provided a fixed deposit of Rs.4 lakh as financial assistance, free ration, five thousand rupees per month for two years, Housing assistance at the rate of Rs.1.5 lakh and a land plot of 30 x 40 sq. ft.
• For the rehabilitation of Bru migrants, Rs 128.38 crore has been given during the financial year 2019-20 and Rs 140 crore during the financial year 2020-21 to the Tripura government.
• The Tripura government initially earmarked 14 locations in six districts for the settlement of Bru migrants and all 13 such proposals, which required forest clearance, have been approved in principle by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.
• So far, plots have been allotted to 2110 families at four locations, out of which 1426 Bru families have been provided housing related assistance.

Bodo Peace Accord:

• A Memorandum of Understanding was signed on 27.01.2020 by the Government of India, Government of Assam and representatives of Bodo groups to resolve the long pending Bodo issue in the presence of Union Home Minister Shri Amit Shah.
• After the agreement, 1615 cadres of NDFB groups surrendered their weapons on 30.01.2020. NDFB groups got disbanded on 09-10 March 2020.
• As per the MoU, a Special Development Package (SDP) of Rs. 1500 crore (Rs 750 crore by the DONER Ministry, Government of India and Rs 750 crore by the Government of Assam) during a period of three years for the overall development of Bodo areas in Assam will be provided.

Now Karbi Anglong Agreement: Click here

Safe Northeast

• The security situation in the North-Eastern states has greatly improved since 2014 under the government of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The year 2019 and 2020 saw the lowest number of insurgency-related incidents and casualties of civilians and security forces during the last two decades.
• There were 824 incidents of violence in the Northeast in 2014 in which 212 innocent civilians were killed, it has reduced to only 162 such incidents in 2020, in which only 2 civilians were killed
• In comparison to 2014, there has been an 80 percent reduction in insurgency incidents in the year 2020. Similarly, in this period, the

• number of casualties in security forces has decreased by 75 percent and civilian casualties by 99 percent.

• In the last 2 years, 3922 militants have surrendered with 873 weapons.
• For reimbursement of Security Related Expenditure (SRE) incurred by the 4 North Eastern States on various security items and rehabilitation of surrendered insurgents Rs.2002 crore amount has been released since 2014-2015

National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) - now BharatNet

• NOFN is an ambitious initiative to trigger a broadband revolution in rural areas.
• NOFN was envisaged as an information super-highway through the creation of a robust middle-mile infrastructure for reaching broadband connectivity to Gram Panchayats.
• The Ministry of Communications has launched the National Broadband Mission that will facilitate universal and equitable access to broadband services across the country, especially in rural and remote areas.

Aim of NOFN

• To facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet and other services to rural India.
• To connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats.
• To achieve this, the existing unused fibres (dark fibre) of public sector undertakings (PSUs) (BSNL, Railtel and Power Grid) were utilised and incremental fibre was laid to connect to Gram Panchayats wherever necessary.
• Non-discriminatory access to the NOFN was provided to all the service providers like Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), Cable TV operators and content providers to launch various services in rural areas.
• The entire project is being funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), which was set up for improving telecom services in rural and remote areas of the country.
• Dark fibre network thus created was lit by appropriate technology thus creating sufficient bandwidth at the Gram Panchayats.
• Based on NOFN experiences, newer, updated and upgraded version - BharatNet was conceived as a nation-wide broadband network.

Dark fibre

• It is an unused optical fibre that has been laid but is not currently being used in fibre-optic communications. Since fibre-optic cable transmits information in the form of light pulses, a ‘dark’ cable refers to one through which light pulses are not being transmitted.
• Companies lay extra optical fibres in order to avoid cost repetition when more bandwidth is needed.
• It is also known as unlit fibre.

INSPIRE Awards - MANAK scheme

• MANAK stands for Million Minds Augmenting National Aspiration and Knowledge.
• The INSPIRE Awards - MANAK scheme is aligned with the ‘Start-up India’ initiative launched by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India.
• The scheme aims to motivate students in the age group of 10-15 years and studying in classes 6 to 10 to become future innovators and critical thinkers.
• It believes that once the original ideas and innovations rooted in Science and Technology by students get incubated, it will foster a culture of creativity and innovative thinking among school children.
• This will help address the societal needs through science and technology and nurture them to become sensitive and responsible citizens and innovation leaders of tomorrow.

INSPIRE Scheme

• Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) is sponsored and managed by the Ministry of Science & Technology.
• The basic objective of INSPIRE is to attract young talents to the study of science and build the required critical human resource pool for strengthening the R & D base.
• The programme does not conduct any competitive exams for the identification of talent at any level.
• It relies on the existing educational structure for the identification of talent.
• The programme has three components:
  1. Scheme for Early Attraction of Talent- (SEATS)
  2. Scholarship for Higher Education- (SHE)
  3. Assured Opportunity for Research Careers - (AORC)