By any measure, the ‘Advantage Assam 2.0: Investment and Infrastructure Summit 2025’ was a remarkable success. Organised by the Assam government led by the chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, it carefully choreographed a diverse range of activities — from setting a Guinness record for the largest number of participants (8,500) in the traditional Jhumur dance performed by the tea plantation communities of the state (earlier, Assam had set a record for the largest performance of Bihu, its biggest festival) to a glittering turnout of top domestic industrialists as well as more than 50 heads of diplomatic missions in Delhi.
The tea plantation communities in Assam, known widely there as tea tribes though they are not yet legally classified as such in the state, are the descendants of groups such as the Adivasis, Santhalis and Oraons who were transported from central India in the 19th century by the British in conditions of great hardship.
According to the chief minister, the business summit drew pledges of not less than Rs 4.91 lakh crore with business heavyweights like Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani and Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of Tata Sons and the Tata Group, announcing ambitious plans for investment and expansion of infrastructure initiatives which would generate tens of thousands of jobs. One of the official organisers described it as the biggest single inflow of private funds for a state in the entire Northeast announced in such a short space of time.
For a middle-level state, despite poverty, flooding and other challenges, Assam has been consistently punching above its weight. It has an estimated population of 37.3 million; that’s one-fourth of Bihar, less than half of Madhya Pradesh, and about one-seventh of Uttar Pradesh. Take just one sector, energy, where Assam’s contribution for decades has been consistently huge. It produces 15% and 14%, respectively, of the national production levels for petroleum and gas.
While the two-day event looked like a virtual blitzkrieg, it was marked by meticulous planning over months involving the state’s political and bureaucratic leaderships which were assigned specific roles. The country’s political leadership was in action in the form of the prime minister (who was coming from and going to other investment summits in other states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party), the industry minister, Piyush Goyal, the external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, the petroleum minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, and the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman.
While pledges are one thing, translating them into reality is quite something else. If this happens in the next 10-to-15 years, Assam and the Northeast will be reshaped. The key is how this will benefit the larger segments of the population across societal and economic lines. Indeed, the pace has been set by the Tatas with their Rs 27,000 crore semiconductor unit at Jagiroad in central Assam — it is already under construction —
that is to manufacture billions of chips every year.
The focus of growth for the next few years seems to be clear and calibrated, with Mr Adani and Mr Ambani announcing their intent to expand in their areas of strength, especially infrastructure. These include airports, aerocities, cement, Artificial Intelligence and digital connectivity, clean energy and food parks. Chandrasekaran signalled the determination of the Tatas to continue and expand the drive in the field of electronics. Additionally, the Brahmaputra is to be spanned not by a bridge but a 10-kilometre underwater tunnel that will have road and rail segments and is designed both for defence and civil use.
While these projects are highly ambitious and potentially transformative, a few key challenges remain: the state government, local businesses and industry, human resources as well as researchers and scientific institutes would be stretched to the limit to manage the huge inflow of capital, projects and expectations. The fact that these will be spread over several years can help organise systems and train human resources.
Another factor that would need to be taken into account is the ways in which climate change are impacting the environment, the economy and the daily lives of the people. Forecasting and scientific research would need to inform the projects that are in the pipeline. This aspect needs to be underlined following China’s plans to build the gargantuan Medog dam on the Yarlung-Tsangpo in Tibet, as the Brahmaputra is known in the land of its origin. The potential impacts of this massive intervention are not known but it has caused widespread concern in India, especially in Assam which could be the most affected, and around the world.
The smaller states of the region look to Assam, which is seen as the elder brother, with traditions of commerce and industry, education, infrastructure and connectivity. As and when Assam grows, so will the entire Northeast as well as the larger neighbourhood of Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, barring China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.
The reverberations from the Summit also give the ruling BJP and its allies a headstart in the run-up to the 2026 assembly elections.
The success of Mr Sarma’s business conclave takes on greater meaning when one reflects on a recent trip to Nagaland. About 22 years ago, Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister undertook a road journey by default from Dimapur, the commercial hub in the plains, to Kohima. The weather had packed up over Kohima and experts had deemed it unsafe to fly there. Emerging from his vehicle at Kohima, Vajpayee told the waiting media something along these lines: “I was told that this was the best road in Nagaland. If this was the best road, I wonder what the worst road is like.”
He promptly announced a peace dividend for Nagaland, part of which was to be used to improve the Kohima-Dimapur highway. Over 20 years later, this road, also known as part of Asian Highway 1 which is supposed to go onto Myanmar and beyond, remains a work in progress. There are frequent landslides, especially during the monsoons, as the hillsides of rock and soft soil, damaged by four-lane engineering ambitions and unable to bear the weight of water, come crashing down. Thus, although parts of the highway are in better shape than a few years back, it morphs abruptly from two lane to four and, then again, to two with vehicles hurtling at each other instead of travelling on the other side of a divider. It’s known locally as the ‘Lipstick Road’ because it’s repaired in huge haste just before Nagaland’s signature Hornbill festival in early December. When I visited last week, workers were hammering iron pikes on rocky hill faces and putting up screens of steel mesh to control possible collapses.
“Does anyone think that these screens and those pins will prevent landslides?” a Naga friend asked. Like other Nagas, he said that a four-lane road was unnecessary from two aspects: the geology of the place made it unsustainable and the expenditure for a state of about 2.2 million was unjustified. A well-maintained, two-lane road was adequate.
To be sustainable, planning and investment for the region need to heed the challenge of climate change. Thus, infrastructure building must be accompanied with energetic protection of trees, forests, hills, wetlands and rivers. Build the ports, but protect the endangered Gangetic dolphins. For everything, as the Nagaland highway shows, is interconnected.
Sanjoy Hazarika is a writer who specialises on the Northeast and travels extensively in the region