AS Lamba
The Northeastern states have tremendous potential for development of tourism but that potential remains untapped for various reasons like infrastructure bottleneck, lack of capacity building and poor marketing efforts. The whole of the North East suffers from acute air, rail and road connectivity problems and there are not many good hotels, tourist lodges and restaurants in most of the places in the region. The telecommunication network is also not as good in comparison to the rest of the country. Water and electricity are also not available throughout the day in most places. Transport services and human resources also need to be significantly improved. Nobody can deny that there are formidable problems that need to be addressed in the shortest possible time frame if the states of North East India are to derive maximum benefits from the unparalleled scenic beauty, the rich flora and fauna and the culture that the region has been blessed with. In order to enable the government at the centre and states to formulate appropriate policies and action plan to draw up a scheme as well as to debilitate the factors of weakness in the region, we have got a comprehensive tourist master plan prepared by TCS. The masterplan can be fully implemented over a period of 10 years depending on actual availability of financial resources. During phase 1 of implementation of the master plan, nine tourist circuits have already been approved, 2 for Tripura and one each for the other states.