Amartya Sen group to prepare Tripura's vision plan

Agartala, March 4 (IANS) Pratichi Trust, founded and headed by Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, will prepare a roadmap of Tripura's future development to make the northeastern state a model, an official said here on Wednesday.

The Tripura government has handed the task of preparing a roadmap for Tripura's future plans to Pratichi Trust and Pratichi Institute, a Tripura planning and coordination department official said.

He said: "Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar accompanied by top officials held a meeting with the senior functionaries of the Pratichi Trust and Pratichi Institute here on Monday. Sarkar asked the Pratichi group to prepare a model report covering all developmental issues to make Tripura a model state in India."

The proposed report would suggest short-, medium- and long-term developmental plans of Tripura. The report must recommend measures, plan and schemes so that Tripura can become a self-reliant state, the chief minister told the meeting.

Sarkar said that if the proposed report were to be made a model report, other states might also be encouraged to take up a similar plan for their development.

The chief minister asked the Pratichi Trust and Pratichi Institute in preparing the report by end 2015 and suggested greater impetus to be given to education, health, water supply, mother and child development, electrification, road connectivity, and infrastructural development.

Homes for the homeless, employment, afforestation, creation of livelihood for the poor, development of backward classes and people, stepping up of per capita income, development of agriculture and industrialisation also figured in his priority list.

The Pratichi Trust and Pratichi Institute was founded in 1999 to work in the field of literacy, basic health care and gender equity in India and Bangladesh. Sen donated some of the Nobel award prize money to these bodies.

The Tripura government in 2006 had prepared a human development report by renowned economist and professor of the Kolkata-based Indian Statistical Institute' Madhura Swaminathan, who is the daughter of M.S. Swaminathan, father of India's green revolution in between the 1940s and the late 1960s.