The north eastern states failed to keep pace with the development at par with the rest of the country as there was no big investment in the infrastructure sector. In fact, no big projects in the infrastructure sector came up in the region during the first four Five Year Plans. Prior to the information of the NEC, the plan of the North Eastern States deviated to a large extent from the national plan priorities. Social and community services were the only sector that received the maximum priority in all the state plans through the development transport and communication and power was vital. The IIE study observed that in the pre-NEC era, the lack of fund with the NE States was the major hurdle in taking up big projects for the development of infrastructure. Consequently, the state mainly concentrated in those projects, which yielded quick results. "As a result, no big projects came up in the infrastructure sector during the first four Five Year Plan. The study said "Since the slow pace of the development of the transport and communication and power sector have been the major cause of the backwardness of the region, the NEC mainly concentrated on these sectors in the successive plan periods." Over the years, other sectors as agriculture, manpower development, industry, science and technology, etc have also become part of the NEC's developmental efforts. A problem noticed in the implementation is the time over-run resulting in cost overrun of most of the projects .which needs to be looked into.