Shillong, July 20: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Thursday expressed confidence that Meghalaya will improve its rank in the next five years.
His statement came after Meghalaya has been ranked among the top five poorest states in India. This was revealed by the report titled ‘National Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI): A Progress Review 2023’ released by the Niti Aayog on July 17.
“Things take time, we have to start off by accepting where we are, what challenges we face and work towards improving it but I am sure that in the next five years, we will see a huge improvement in these numbers,” Sangma told reporters.
“We are already seeing the facts; I cannot show to you. You will not be able to see it because it is a large area of work that we are doing but if you are going to see the kind of different steps being taken, you will be able to understand that the actions being taken are precisely to ensure these concerns and these issues are addressed and I am very confident that in the next five years things will be very different for the state of Meghalaya,” he added.
Stating that Meghalaya is facing a number of challenges, the CM said, “All steps in the last five years that we have taken have been towards changing that particular aspect of things. It is not simple and it is not so easy to understand that for the last 45 years, we have been really lacking behind.”
“There have been lots of challenges but we have tried to change that in the last five years and we have made some significant changes and even the Government of India has appreciated us but yes overall, the challenges will remain. We have to start by accepting the fact that we do have challenges, accepting the fact that we are lacking behind and only by accepting it will we be able to take things forward,” he asserted.
Sangma further added the government will look into the report of the Niti Aayog and take steps accordingly.
“What is important now is to look forward and see how we can make a difference and change things. So definitely, whatever the factors that NITI Aayog has brought into the measurement of this index, we will look into it in detail,” he said.
Sangma also recalled that Meghalaya was ranked 27th in the vaccination in 2018 and today it is ranked 2nd and said, “This is because we made a very strong effort to ensure that we started working on that aspect of things. We had a very large figure of maternal mortality rate at one point in time but for the last five years, we have brought it down by almost 45-50% per cent.”
He said that the state also faced a large number of challenges apart from financial challenges adding “There are lots of systematic challenges which we are trying to change but slowly and steadily we will see that scenario is in the process of being changed.”
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