To help the government in efforts to develop the North East, Union Minister Jitendra Singh today asked the apex body of cost accountants ICAI to prepare a draft paper having suggestions for the region's development. Singh, who is the Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), said that such an initiative from the Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICAI) would be "good and smart".

"We have started the development of North Eastern region on a fast track... We have a huge potential there," the Minister said while speaking at an awards function organised by ICAI here. "I request you (ICAI) to prepare a draft paper where we can involve you and related groups to focus on the North East. It would also be a good and a smart initiative because (development of) North East is very high on the priority of the government," Singh noted.

He said the role of cost accountants and cost managers are increasing day by day in contemporary India.

Emphasising that India is a "happening place today", Singh said the government has progressively demonstrated the rise in economic growth in the last 13-14 months. "When the NDA government left it was around 8 per cent something and when we came back it was half of that.

"We are here to prove the point with a vengenance... Our objective is to achieve double digit growth rate and a double digit growth rate that can be sustained," he said.

Singh is also the Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, among other portfolios. According to him, people who have been settled abroad for many decades are wishing to come back as they find that there is something to look forward to in India.

"All these things you have been witnessing and hearing ever since we came over led by Narendra Modi.. it is all inspired by the will to prove the point, to prove the point that we can make it in India," he said.

Singh stressed that the team led by Modi also came with the vengeance to prove a point because we were in opposition for almost seven decades.

"We were better known for staging protests, sitting on dharnas, burning effigies and doing all sorts of those things which were not taken seriously by the ruling elite. We were not actually taken seriously and therefore when we came over it was believed that we were not capable... Then we are there to prove a point," the Minister said. Noting that the entire world looks up to India with awe, Singh said it is not for nothing that wherever the Prime Minister goes, he is received with so much of enthusiasm and so much reverence.

"There is a Prime Minister with a two-third's majority and who is there to stay. The President of America's second term is coming to an end and he will be out of job but the Prime Minister of India is there to stay," he added.