Why a new development model?

Except for employment in the low-skill segments, no major development benefits are retained in Sikkim.

The economies of the Eastern Himalaya have mostly followed a growth model that has intrinsic and complex mechanisms of promoting the outflow of development multipliers. While defying and disproving most of the orthodox theoretical underpinnings of development, the highlands in Nepal, Bhutan and various hill provinces in India have unconsciously recorded a trend of siphoning off the cream of development mostly to the lowlands or the mainstream theatres. One can attribute this deleteriously unending phenomenon to the dominant and mindless development planning far away from the remote action centres. The agents involved in the process are primarily outsiders with a huge capital base, entrepreneurial history and market capture. The underdeveloped nature of physical infrastructures, nascent institutional structures and the very presence of government in the form of tightly bureaucratised systems make the hills and mountains deeply vulnerable to backwardness syndrome and incremental practices.