Demographic Statistics of North East Indian States (2011 Census)

Flora of North East India

The following figures highlight the biodiversity significance of the region:

1) 51 forest types are found in the region, broadly classified into six major types — tropical moist deciduous forests, tropical semi evergreen forests, tropical wet evergreen forests, subtropical forests, temperate forests and alpine forests.

·2) Out of the nine important vegetation types of India, six are found in the North Eastern region.

3) These forests harbour 8,000 out of 15,000 species of flowering plants. In floral species richness, the highest diversity is reported from the states of Arunachal Pradesh (5000 species) and Sikkim (4500 species) amongst the North Eastern States.

4) According to the Indian Red Data Book, published by the Botanical Survey of India, 10 percent of the flowering plants in the country are endangered. Of the 1500 endangered floral species, 800 are reported from North East India.

5) Most of the North Eastern states have more than 60% of their area under forest cover, a minimum suggested coverage for the hill states in the country in order to protect from erosion.

6) North East India is a part of Indo-Burma 'hotspot'. The hotspot is the world's second largest, next only to the Mediterranean basin, with an area 2,206,000 square kilometres (852,000 sq mi) among the 25 identified.
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 The World Wildlife Fund for Nature has identified the entire Eastern Himalayas as a priority Global 200 Ecoregion. Conservation International has upscaled the Eastern Himalaya Hotspot, which initially covered the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Darjeeling Hills, Bhutan, and Southern China, to the Indo Burma (Hotspot) which now includes all the eight states of North-East India, along with the neighbouring countries of Bhutan, southern China and Myanmar.

The population and diversity of the region’s birds largely reflects the diversity of habitats associated with a wide altitudinal range. North East India supports some of the highest bird diversities in the Orient, with about 850 bird species. The Eastern Himalaya and the Assam plains have been identified as an Endemic Bird Area by the Royal Society for Protection of Birds, (ICBP 1992). The global distribution of 24 restricted-range species is limited to the region. The region’s lowland and montane moist-to-wet tropical evergreen forests are considered to be the northernmost limit of true tropical rainforests in the world.

The region has been identified by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research as a centre of rice germplasm. The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), India, has highlighted the region as being rich in wild relatives of crop plants. It is the centre of origin of citrus fruits. Two primitive variety of maize, Sikkim Primitive 1 and 2, have been reported from Sikkim (Dhawan, 1964). Although jhum cultivation, a traditional system of agriculture, is often cited as a reason for the loss of forest cover of the region, this primary agricultural economic activity practised by local tribes supported the cultivation of 35 varieties of crops. The region is rich in medicinal plants and many other rare and endangered taxa. Its high endemism in both higher plants, vertebrates, and avian diversity has qualified it as a biodiversity ‘hotspot.’

This aspect is elaborated in details in the subsequent sections. In 1995, the International Union for Conservation of Nature identified Namdapha in Arunachal Pradesh as a centre of plant diversity.

Fauna North East India

The International Council for Bird Preservation, UK identified the Assam plains and the Eastern Himalaya as an Endemic Bird Area (EBA). The EBA has an area of 220,000 km2 following the Himalayan range in the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Nepal, Myanmar and the Indian states of Sikkim, northern West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, southern Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram. Because of a southward occurrence of this mountain range in comparison to other Himalayan ranges, this region has a distinctly different climate, with warmer mean temperatures and fewer days with frost, and much higher rainfall. This has resulted in the occurrence of a rich array of restricted-range bird species. More than two critically endangered species, three endangered species, and 14 vulnerable species of birds are in this EBA. Stattersfield et al. (1998) identified 22 restricted range species, out of which 19 are confined to this region and the remaining three are present in other endemic and secondary areas. Eleven of the 22 restricted-range species found in this region are considered as threatened (Birdlife International 2001), a number greater than in any other EBA of India.

WWF has identified the following priority ecoregions in North-East India:

    Brahmaputra Valley Semi Evergreen Forests
    Eastern Himalayan Broadleaved Forests
    Eastern Himalayan Sub-alpine Coniferous Forests
    India–Myanmar Pine Forests[citation needed]

Forest reserves

    Namdapha National Park, Arunachal Pradesh
    Manas National Park, Barpeta, (Assam)
    Kaziranga National Park, Assam
    Orang National Park, Assam
    Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, Morigaon, (Assam)
    Sipahijola Wildlife Sanctuary, Tripura
    Keibul Lamjao National Park, Bishnupur district, (Manipur)
    Nokrek National Park, West Garo Hills (Meghalaya)
    Dihang-Dibang Biosphere Reserve, Arunachal Pradesh
    Khangchendzonga National Park, Sikkim
    Dibru-Saikhowa National Park, Tinsukia (Assam)

NE India Contemporary Economic Scenario

Report Reveals Northeast’s Incredible Growth Rate, But Also How It’s Failing Miserably

Source: https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2016/02/northeast-report/

 

* India’s fastest-growing state is Meghalaya, with a growth rate of 9.7% in 2013-14, higher than the fastest-growing big state, Madhya Pradesh, at 9.5%. Arunachal Pradesh grew faster than Gujarat.

* Fewer people, 12.8 million, live below the poverty line in the entire northeast than in just one large state, Karnataka, which has 12.9 million poor people.
* Tripura reported India’s highest unemployment rate, 25.2% in urban areas, followed closely by Nagaland with 23.8% in 2011-12. The highest unemployment in the urban areas of a large state was 7%, in Jammu and Kashmir.
The eight north-eastern states–Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim (added in 2002) and Tripura–are growing fast, educating their people at a rate much faster than the rest of India, reducing their dependence on agriculture, and generally prospering, IndiaSpend research has revealed, but the growth is not creating enough jobs and livelihood opportunities.
Other thing evident is that while northeast states are often clubbed together, we found, in many cases, wide differences; for example, Manipur’s high poverty rate and Sikkim’s prosperity. Some of the economic indices are India’s highest, and some are India’s lowest.
Today, in the first of a three-part series, we analyse the northeast’s economic indicators, such as gross state domestic product (GSDP), unemployment, and population below the poverty line.

Growth driven by services, industry

Meghalaya, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh recorded the highest growth rates in GSDP in 2013-14. Meghalaya’s growth in GSDP of 9.7% was equivalent to Bihar, which had a GSDP growth rate of 9.1%. Arunachal Pradesh, with a growth rate in GSDP of 8.9% grew faster than Gujarat, which reported 8.7%. The share of the industrial sector for all eight states has increased while the share of agriculture and allied activities has declined. In Mizoram, for example, the growth rate for agriculture and allied activities went down from 16.4% in 2010-11 to 0.07% in 2013-14.

Unemployment higher in urban areas

Unemployment in urban areas across all north-eastern states is higher than rural areas, and is in line with the national pattern.
“The growth in manufacturing has not been accompanied by a commensurate growth of employment opportunity for the local population,” Sumarbin Umdor, professor of Economics at North-Eastern Hill University, wrote in The Shillong Times. “Given the lack of job creation in other formal sectors, most of the employment outside agriculture is therefore in the low productivity informal sector, particularly in informal construction, retail trade and transportation.” Tripura recorded the highest unemployment rate in urban areas at 25.2% in 2011-12, India’s highest jobless rate, followed by Nagaland with 23.8%, India’s second-highest rate, and Manipur with 7.1%. Meghalaya had India’s second-lowest unemployment rate (after Gujarat), with 0.4% in rural areas and 2.8% in urban areas in 2011-12.
A caveat: Unemployment rates in rural India are always lower than urban, since they do not account for hidden or partial employment. In general, employment rates do not adequately reflect reality, but only offer an indication.

Poverty unevenly spread: Manipur is poorest; Sikkim richest

The northeast has widely varying rates of poverty, which largely reflect unrest and insurgency. While 36.9% people live below the poverty line (the ability to spend Rs 1,170 per family per month in urban areas, Rs 1,118 in rural) in Manipur, where a cocktail of insurgent groups have crippled the economy, only 8.2% of the population is below the poverty line in Sikkim (Rs 1,226 in urban, Rs 930 in rural), where plentiful hydro power has raised incomes, as IndiaSpend has reported. Meghalaya and Sikkim have seen some of the largest falls in poverty in India. For instance, the percentage of population below the poverty line in Sikkim was 13.1% in 2009-10 and it fell to 8.2% in 2011-12. In comparison, poverty in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh–the large states most successful in cutting poverty–fell from 36.7% to 31.7% and 37.7% to 29.4% over the same period. Similarly, in Meghalaya, the percentage of population below the poverty line was 17.1% in 2009-10 and fell to 11.9% in 2011-12.
    Although the number of people below the poverty line might be lower than the national average, the intensity of poverty in these states is much higher, according to the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD). Poverty in the northeast, like the rest of India, is a more rural phenomenon than urban: 11.6 million people of the 12.8 million living below the poverty line are in rural areas. The two main reasons for poverty are under-developed agriculture and unskilled labour, according to NIRD. To address the region’s development challenges, including infrastructure, the Central government created the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region in 2004, allocating Rs 2,362 crore to the ministry in 2015-16. The grants from the Centre and their share in Central taxes together form 79% of their total revenue, according to the Reserve Bank of India. Some of the grants like the ones given out by the Ministry are influenced by politics as well. For example, from 2010-11 to 2012-13, Arunachal Pradesh received the highest grants with almost 19% of the total allocations. Later, when the government wanted to sign the Naga Peace Accord of 2015, the allocation to Nagaland was increased (to 20%) and Arunachal Pradesh had come down.
This article was originally published on IndiaSpend.com, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

 

 
By Prachi Salve & Sanjana Pandit, IndiaSpend.com: