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Mahesh

19/07/24 17:43 PM IST

NITI Aayog and policymaking

In News
  • The National Democratic Alliance-led (NDA) government recently reconstituted the government think tank NITI Aayog.
  • The Aayog now introduces four full-time members and 15 Union Ministers from the BJP and allies of the NDA as ex-officio members or as special invitees.
Members of NITI Aayog
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi will continue as the chairperson of NITI Aayog while economist Suman K. Berry continues his tenure as the vice-chairperson.
  • Mr Berry succeeded erstwhile vice chairperson Rajiv Kumar to the post in 2022.
  • The NITI Aayog Vice President had served as a member on both the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and the National Statistical Commission. 
  • Other than Mr Berry, scientist V.K. Saraswat, agricultural economist Ramesh Chand, paediatrician V.K. Paul and macro-economist Arvind Virmani will continue being full-time members of NITI Aayog.  
  • Other than this, Union Minister for Defence Rajnath Singh, Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister for Agriculture and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan are part of the think-tank. 
Role of NITI Aayog
  • The National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog, is the apex public policy think-tank of the government.
  • It is tasked with “catalysing economic development, and fostering cooperative federalism” by involving State governments in the economic policy-making process.
  • This is to be attained by utilising a bottom-up approach, that is, by focusing on the foundational aspects at the lowest level before working up to the top level. 
  • NITI Aayog’s activities can be divided into four main heads: policy and programme framework, cooperative and competitive federalism, monitoring and evaluation, and think-tank activities, knowledge creation and innovation hub. Its varied verticals and cells, categorised by sectors and functions, provide the requisite support to help NITI Aayog to “develop as a state-of-the art resource centre with necessary knowledge and skills.”
  • The idea is to enable the body to act with “speed, promote research and innovation, provide strategic policy vision for the government, and deal with contingent issues.”
  • The Governing Council of the body comprises of Chief Ministers of all States and Union Territories with legislatures, and lieutenant governors of other Union Territories.
  • The Council serves as a platform to “discuss inter-sectoral, inter-departmental and federal issues to accelerate the implementation of the national development agenda.
  • The Aayog prepares the Sustainable Development Goals India Index, or the SDG India Index.
  • It measures and tracks the progress made by all States and union territories on 113 indicators aligned to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s (MoSPI) National Indicator Framework.
  • It computes goal-wise scores on the 16 sustainable development goals (adopted in 2015 at the United Nations) for each State and union territory. As per its latest report, the composite score for India improved to 77 in 2023-24 from 22 in 2020-21.
  • The report held that India “accelerated progress” on the SDGs notwithstanding global headwinds.
  • The Government’s focus on ensuring food and nutrition security, health, education, electrification, housing for all, sanitation, clean cooking fuel and energy has significantly contributed to the improvement.
Source- The Hindu

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