ON THE HIGHWAY TO HOPE

Tripura has done wonderfully on social indices. The challenge now is infrastructure and the jobs crisis

On March 21, just two weeks after taking oath, Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb was in New Delhi where he had meetings with over a dozen Union ministers. On his return to state capital Agartala, he announced: “The Centre has promised to invest Rs 2,587 crore in various schemes and projects in Tripura.”

The sense of urgency and purpose was evident as Tripura’s development has remained a paradox—the state has shown decent performances in social development indicators but has lagged in infrastructure development.

On multiple social and health indicators, the northeastern state competes with Goa, Kerala, Karnataka and Gujarat—states with high per capita income. It has a literacy rate of 87.8 percent and its sex ratio, at 960 females per 1,000 males, is above the national average of 942. But, at 19.7 per cent, Tripura also has the highest percentage of unemployment in India—four times the national average of 4.9 per cent.

So the top priority of the newly elected BJP government was clear—it had to develop infrastructure and generate employment. Tripura is connected with the rest of the country by a single highway—National Highway 44. The Union road and highways ministry has given assurances that it will develop and extend the national highways in the state with an investment of Rs 12,000 crore. “This will ensure direct or indirect employment for 15,000 to 20,000 youth,” says Deb, adding that other central schemes and projects will create employment opportunities for an additional 12,000 people.

Innovative technology is also being used for road development. The chief minister recently asked the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) to construct “at least

half a kilometre road” with recycled plastic waste after initiating a doorto-door drive to collect it.

State transport minister Pranajit Singha Roy says the state has a broader vision vis-a-vis developing international connectivity through roads, railways and waterways. In 2016, the central government fulfilled a long-standing demand of the state by providing broad-gauge railway services to the state. A 15-km railway track from Agartala to Akhaura in Bangladesh will be completed by 2020. “This track will connect the northeastern states with the south Asian countries through Bangladesh,” says the chief minister.

While dedicating to the people the revamped national highway connecting the Tripura Sundari temple in Gomati district and Sabroom in South Tripura—the 74 km single-lane highway was widened for two-way traffic—President Ram Nath Kovind said it would improve border trade by connecting south Tripura with Bangladesh. “The road leads to an under-construction bridge on the Feni river in Sabroom. Once the bridge is functional, Tripura will be connected to Chittagong,” Kovind said.

The state government has also taken initiatives to introduce inland water transport by connecting the Gomati and Haora rivers with the Meghna river in Bangladesh to facilitate movement of goods and passengers between the two countries.

The state has also shown massive improvement in power generation. At 92.7 per cent, access to electricity for households in Tripura is better than the 88.2 per cent national average and comparable with wealthier states like Kerala, Goa, Gujarat and Karnataka.

With an installed power capacity of 727.24 MW, Tripura is a power surplus state, even exporting power to Myanmar and Bangladesh. The Tripura government has also embarked on a plan to provide power connection to more than 50,000 tribal families living in the remote hills by tapping solar energy under the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya). “We have identified 52,000 beneficiaries spread over 531 villages across the state. Each location has hardly three to seven families residing in the hills. So supplying power from conventional sources via grid would be most inconvenient. Solar energy is the best alternative,” deputy chief minister Jishnu Devvarma, who also holds charge of the power ministry, said recently.

Another welfare scheme which has got a big push from the central government is the LPG distribution to poor families. In Tripura, 922,000 households currently have LPG connections and efforts are on for 100 per cent coverage. The Union ministry for petroleum and natural gas has taken up a pipeline project with Bangladesh for carrying natural gas from Chittagong to Tripura. The Indian Oil Corporation will set up a bottling plant in Agartala by 2020.

For seven consecutive years till 2015, Tripura had been the best performing state in the country in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), a central scheme that guarantees the “right to work”. However, in the past two years, the state’s performance has dropped because of “curtailed” funds from the Centre. “Funds had to be curtailed because of the discrepancies by the previous Left government. They geotagged a lot of areas where no work was done at all,” says Devvarma. The state now claims to have received an assurance of Rs 214 crore in MNREGA funds from the Centre.

Another area where the state government is keen to improve the state’s performance is in the supply of drinking water. Over 87 per cent of households in Tripura have access to piped or protected sources of water, marginally below the national average of 89.8 per cent.