NITI Aayog

The NITI Aayog (Hindi for Policy

Commission) (abbreviation for National
Institution for Transforming India) is a
policy think tank of the Government of
India, established with the aim to achieve
sustainable development goals with
cooperative federalism by fostering the
involvement of State Governments of India
in the economic policy-making process
using a bottom-up approach. Its initiatives
include "15-year road map", "7-year vision,
strategy, and action plan", AMRUT, Digital
India, Atal Innovation Mission, Medical
Education Reform, agriculture reforms
(Model Land Leasing Law, Reforms of the
Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee
Act, Agricultural Marketing and Farmer
Friendly Reforms Index for ranking states),
Indices Measuring States’ Performance in
Health, Education and Water Management,
Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on
Rationalization of Centrally Sponsored
Schemes, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Sub-Group of
Chief Ministers on Skill Development, Task
Forces on Agriculture and up of Poverty,
and Transforming India Lecture Series.[2]
 NITI Aayog

Agency overview

Formed 1 January 2015

Preceding Planning Commission

Headquarters New Delhi

Annual budget ₹339.65 crores ($48+

million) (2020-21)[1]
including Ministry of
planning
Agency executives Narendra Modi,
(Chairperson)
Rajiv Kumar, (Vice
Chairperson)

Amitabh Kant, (CEO)

Parent agency Ministry of planning

Website www.niti.gov.in

It was established in 2015, by the NDA

government, to replace the Planning
Commission which followed a top-down
model. The NITI Aayog council comprises
all the state Chief Ministers, along with the
Chief Ministers of Delhi and Puducherry,
the Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and
Nicobar, and a vice-chairman nominated
by the Prime Minister. In addition,
temporary members are selected from
leading universities and research
institutions. These members include a
chief executive officer, four ex-official
members, and two part-time members. It
doubled the current growth - developing
self-sufficient cluster target growth of 10%

History
29 May 2014Independent Evaluation Office
submitted an assessment report to Prime
Minister Narendra Modi with the
recommendation to replace the Planning
Commission with a "control commission."
On 13 August 2014, the Union Cabinet
scrapped the Planning Commission, to be
replaced with a diluted version of the
National Advisory Council (NAC) of India.
On 1 January 2015, a Cabinet resolution
was passed to replace the Planning
Commission with the newly formed NITI
Aayog (National Institution for
Transforming India). Union Government of
India announced the formation of NITI
Aayog on 1 January 2015. The first
meeting of NITI Aayog was chaired by
Narendra Modi on 8 February 2015.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made the

following observation on the necessity of
creating NITI Aayog, "The 65-year-old
Planning Commission had become a
redundant organisation. It was relevant in
a command economy structure, but not
any longer. India is a diversified country
and its states are in various phases of
economic development along with their
own strengths and weaknesses. In this
context, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to
economic planning is obsolete. It cannot
make India competitive in today's global
economy."[3] It is a reformation scheme of
the day-to-day lifestyles of the people of
India.

Objectives
1. To evolve a shared vision of national
development priorities, sectors, and
strategies with the active involvement
of States in the light of national
objectives.
2. To foster cooperative federalism
through structured support initiatives
and mechanisms with the States on a
continuous basis, recognizing that
strong States make a strong nation.
3. To develop mechanisms to formulate
credible plans at the village level and
aggregate these progressively at
higher levels of government.
4. To ensure, on areas that are
specifically referred to it, that the
interests of national security are
incorporated in economic strategy
and policy.
5. To pay special attention to the
sections of our society that may be at
risk of not benefiting adequately from
economic progress.
6. To design strategic and long term
policy and programme frameworks
and initiatives, and monitor their
progress and their efficacy. The
lessons learnt through monitoring
and feedback will be used for making
innovative improvements, including
necessary mid-course corrections.
7. To provide advice and encourage
partnerships between key
 stakeholders and national and
international like-minded Think tanks,
as well as educational and policy
research institutions.
8. To create a knowledge, innovation
and entrepreneurial support system
through a collaborative community of
national and international experts,
practitioners and other partners.
9. To offer a platform for resolution of
inter-sectoral and inter departmental
issues in order to accelerate the
implementation of the development
agenda.
10. To maintain a state-of-the-art
Resource Centre, be a repository of
research on good governance and
best practices in sustainable and
equitable development as well as
help their dissemination to stake-
holders.
11. To actively monitor and evaluate the
implementation of programmes and
initiatives, including the identification
of the needed resources so as to
strengthen the probability of success
and scope of delivery.
 12. To focus on technology upgradation
and capacity building for
implementation of programmes and
initiatives.
13. To undertake other activities as may
be necessary in order to further the
execution of the national
development agenda, and the
objectives mentioned in above.

NITI Lectures
NITI Aayog has started a new initiative on
the advice of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi called NITI Lectures: Transforming
India. The aim of this initiative is to invite
globally reputed policy makers, experts,
administrators to India to share their
knowledge, expertise, experience in policy
making and good governance with Indian
counterparts. This initiative will be a series
of lectures started with first lecture[4]
delivered by Deputy Prime Minister of
Singapore Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
He delivered lecture on subject called
"India and the Global Economy" at Vigyan
Bhavan, New Delhi. The Prime Minister
spoke about the idea behind this lecture
series and stated that his vision for India is
rapid transformation, not gradual
evolution.[5]

On 31 August 2017, NITI Aayog developed

a State Statistics Handbook that
consolidates key statistics across sectors
for every Indian State/UT. While the State
data on crucial indicators is currently
fragmented across different sources, this
handbook provides a one-stop database of
important State statistics.[6]

Initiatives
NITI Aayog has taken initiative on
Blockchain usages in E-governance and
has conceptualized the tech stack as
'IndiaChain'. IndiaChain is the name given
to Niti Aayog's ambitious project to
develop a nation-wide blockchain network.

“ Artificial intelligence, machine

learning, Internet of Things,
blockchain and big data hold
potential to take India to new
heights ”
— Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the 2016
World Economic Forum.[7]
The vision is to link IndiaChain with
IndiaStack, the digital infrastructure that
forms the backbone of the Aadhar
project.[8] The NITI Aayog initiative on the
blockchain system will enforce contracts
quicker, prevent fraudulent transactions,
and help farmers through the efficient
disbursement of subsidies. This project is
the first step to a larger system of record
keeping and public good disbursement.[9]

Members
The NITI Aayog comprises the following:
The Prime Minister as the Chairperson.
A Governing Council composed of Chief
Ministers of all the States and Union
territories with Legislatures and
lieutenant governors of Union
Territories(except Delhi and
Pondicherry)
Regional Councils composed of Chief
Ministers of States and Lt. Governors of
Union Territories in the region to
address specific issues and
contingencies impacting more than one
state or a region.
Full-time organizational framework
composed of a Vice-Chairperson, four
full-time members, two part-time
members (from leading universities,
research organizations and other
relevant institutions in an ex-officio
capacity), four ex-officio members of the
Union Council of Ministers, a Chief
Executive Officer (with the rank of
Secretary to the Government of India)
who looks after administration, and a
secretariat.
Experts and specialists in various
fields.[10]
With the Prime Minister as the
Chairperson, presently NITI Aayog
consists[11] of:

Vice Chairperson: Rajiv Kumar[12]

Ex-Officio Members: Amit Shah, Rajnath
Singh, Nirmala Sitaraman and Narendra
Singh Tomar [13]
Special Invitees: Nitin Gadkari, Piyush
Goyal, Thawar Chand Gehlot and Rao
Inderjit Singh [14]
Full-time Members: V. K. Saraswat
(former DRDO Chief), Ramesh Chand
 (Agriculture Expert)[15] and Dr. Vinod
Paul (Public Health expert)[16]
Chief Executive Officer (CEO): Amitabh
Kant[17]
Governing Council: All Chief Ministers of
States (and Delhi and Puducherry),
Lieutenant Governor of Andaman &
Nicobar Islands, and Special Invites

References
1. "NITI Aayog Budget Allocation
Increased by More than 20%" . Press
Information Bureau. 23 February 2018.
Retrieved 16 February 2020.
2. "NITI Ayog update June 2017." , NIC
news , June 2017.
3. "We will use every provision in the
Constitution to push reforms" .
www.openthemagazine.com.
4. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi
inaugurates 'NITI Lectures:
Transforming India' " .
5. "Niti Lectures" .
6. Jatinder, Kaur. "NITI Aayog Releases
State Statistics Handbook" (Online).
ABC Live. Retrieved 1 September
2017.
 7. "PM Modi Says AI, Blockchain Will
Change the Nature of Jobs" .
8. "IndiaChain: India's ambitious
blockchain project - The Indian
Economist | DailyHunt" . DailyHunt.
Retrieved 31 October 2018.
9. "What is IndiaChain: a blockchain
system that could soon be the heart of
governance in India?" . Business
Insider. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
10. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from
the original (PDF) on 16 July 2015.
Retrieved 16 July 2015.
11. "Gazette of India: Re-constitution of
NITI Aayog dated June 7, 2018" (PDF).
12. "Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind
Panagariya in RBI Governor race" ,
Deccan Chronicle, 20 June 2016
13. "New Ministers join NITI Aayog" . The
Hindu. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
14. "New Ministers join NITI Aayog" . The
Hindu. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
15. "Agriculture expert Ramesh Chand
appointed as Niti Aayog member |
Business Standard News" . Business-
standard.com. 18 June 2016.
16. "From Planning Commission To Niti
Aayog: Life comes a full circle for Dr
Vinod Paul" . The Indian Express. 6
August 2017. Retrieved 28 August
2017.
17. "Niti Aayog extends deadline for
research labs by a month" , The
Economic Times, 15 June 2016
NITI Aayog: indiagossip today

External links
Media related to NITI Aayog at Wikimedia
Commons
 Official website

Refer to Planning Commission of India

http://planningcommission.gov.in/

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