Socio-Economic Development Paradigm Through Researches’ Lens

The Indian economy has been giving its best effort to betray the stigma of underdevelopment. Over the years since independence, the nation has achieved remarkable progress in stimulating its income growth but the question of inclusive growth has still been a concern. Despite enlarging income and expanding market, India has still been lagging behind many least developed nations in terms of achieving human development goals. Not only this, India ranked 105th out of 127 countries in Global Hunger Index, 2024. This indicates a serious hunger crisis, food insecurity, and malnutrition. The term economic development is necessarily multidimensional. It encompasses several components of social, economic, political, and legal aspects of human life and must relate to the quality of human life. The proposed edited volume is a compilation of efforts made by the researchers on the diverse socio-economic issues of the Indian economy especially focusing on the northeastern region of India. Thus, endeavor reflects the research thoughts or issues, analysis and policies in connection with the issues of socio-economic development of northeastern economy of India. Economic development is also concerned with regional equality. A true development policy must address regional inequality with an objective to wipe out regional differences. While dealing with the regional issues related to Indian economy, socio-economic development of north-eastern region seeks major concern. The northeastern region of India has distinct topological features and covered a significant percentage of area with hills and hillocks and forests. The region is known for its ethnolinguistic diversities which is simultaneously the strength and weakness of the region. One of the serious issues of the region is the connectivity as this land is connected with a thin corridor known Siliguri corridor popularly known as chicken’s neck. Amid geographical, demographic, and connectivity-related challenges the economy has been lagging behind the other regions of the mainstream in terms of income and employment. Despite the region is well endowed with natural resources having an enormous scope of economic expansion, there has been a shortage of stimulants that could exploit the potentialities to expand. As the region shares long international borders with China, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh, it is also a strategically important region for the nation. Further, this region is considered as the gateway for India to South- East Asia. Hence, the economic development of the northeastern region has immense significance from the national point of view. The government of India has been giving a special attention for the development of this region and to integrating the region to secure inclusive development since independence. This edited volume raises burning issues of the Indian economy especially targeting northeastern region covering regional economic growth, trade, ethnolinguistic diversity, gender issues, health, education, infrastructure, entrepreneurship etc.

Dr. Sujoy Das, HOD, Department of Economics, Women’s College, Silchar

Dr. Nairita Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Women’s College, Silchar

Dr. Pratiti Singha, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Women’s College, Silchar