ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that the provisioning of the physical infrastructure is relatively easy, but the provisioning of institutional and social infrastructures is difficult and sometimes it may be extremely difficult. It discusses a critique of the traditional development policy followed in northeast India, like other parts of the country and it shows how the paradigm of human development emerged as the alternative. The chapter highlights the status of human development in northeast India. It analyses the factors that have contributed to a level of human development, which is far less than its potential in the region. The paradigm of human development grew out of the accumulated dissatisfaction over the effects of policies framed initially on the prescription of the traditional development economics and later largely on neoclassical growth economics. The human development paradigm wants to keep the market in its own place.
