NITI Aayog -नीति आयोग 

Is a Government of India policy think-tank established by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 January 2015 after his having dissolved the Planning Commission.  The acronym stands for National Institution for Transforming India. "Aayog'" is the Hindi word for "commission".

The stated aim of NITI Aayog's creation is to foster involvement and participation in the economic policy-making process by state governments of India, a "bottom-up" approach in contrast to the Planning Commission's tradition of "top-down" decision-making.

 "NITI Blogs" provide provide public access to articles, field reports and work in progress as well as the published opinions of NITI officials, are available to the public on the Aayog website.

Members

The NITI Aayog comprises the following:

1- Prime Minister of India as the Chairperson.

2- Governing Council comprising the Chief Ministers of all the States and Union territories with Legislatures and lieutenant governors of other Union Territories.

3- Regional Councils will be formed to address specific issues and contingencies impacting more than one state or a region.

These will be formed for a specified tenure. The Regional Councils will be convened by the Prime Minister and will comprise of the Chief Ministers of States and Lt. Governors of Union Territories in the region.

These will be chaired by the Chairperson of the NITI Aayog or his nominee.

4- Experts, specialists and practitioners with relevant domain knowledge as special invitees nominated by the Prime Minister.

5- Full-time organizational framework (in addition to Prime Minister as the Chairperson) comprising :-                     1- Vice-Chairperson: Suman Bery is an Indian economist, academic, and writer who is the newly appointed Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog .

2- Members: Three (3) Full-time: economist Bibek Debroy, former DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat and Agriculture Expert Professor Ramesh Chand.

3- Part-time members: Maximum of two from leading universities research organizations and other relevant institutions in an ex-officio capacity. Part-time members will be on a rotational basis

4- Ex Officio members: Maximum of 4 members of the Union Council of Ministers to be nominated by the Prime Minister.

5- Chief Executive Officer: To be appointed by the Prime Minister for a fixed tenure, in the rank of Secretary to the Government of India.

Shri B.V.R. Subrahmanyam is the Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog .

6- Secretariat as deemed necessary 

NITI Aayog Vs Planning Commission-

1-States' role

NITI Aayog – Includes the Chief Ministers of all States and the Lieutenant Governors of all Union territories in its Governing Council, devolving more power to the States of the Union. Planning Commission – States' role was limited to the National Development Council and annual interaction during Plan meetings

2-Member secretary

NITI Aayog – To be known as the CEO and to be appointed by the prime minister.

Planning Commission – Secretaries or member secretaries were appointed through the usual process

3-Part-time members

NITI Aayog – To have a number of part-time members, depending on the need from time to time

Planning Commission – Full Planning Commission had no provision for part-time members

4-Allocation - NITI Aayog has no power of Allocation where as Planning commission had.

5-Nature -- NITI Aayog is a think tank whereas Planning commission acted as a super cabinet.

5- key changes Niti Aayog has made:

1-A new planning timeline

A-15-year plan –

The Niti Aayog sets a 15-year plan for government actions for achieving social goals such as poverty reduction, and improving health and sanitation.

B-Seven-year strategy-

Another seven-year strategy document for 2017-24 will chart out policy action outlined as the “National

Development Agenda”.

The National Development Agenda:

– It has been started to maintain good governance and best practices in sustainable and equitable development.

– It offers a resolution method for inter-sector and inter-departmental issues in order to accelerate the implementation of the development agenda.

C-A three-year “Action Agenda” –

-A three-year “Action Agenda” from 2017-18 to 2019-20 is being worked out to assess funding requirements.

-Imposing higher taxes on petrol in and around the more polluted cities to encourage commuters to share cars and take public transportation.

-Making public transportation faster and more comfortable to discourage the use of private vehicles.

-Finding alternatives to crop residue burning, reducing pollution from cooking fires and installing flu gas de-sulpherizers on all coal power plants in or close to densely populated areas except those less than 5MW capacity and those older than 25 years by 2020.

- Switching to cleaner technologies to reduce pollution from brick kilns considerably within three years.

A three-year “Action Agenda” from 2017-18 to 2019-20 is being worked out to assess funding requirements.

2-Unshackling agriculture

The plan panel proposed major changes in the agricultural produce marketing committee act, the law that sets in place systems to ensure farmers get a fair deal for their produce and are not exploited. Once implemented by states, the APMC changes will be one of the biggest reforms in the country.

The panel has also drawn up an agricultural marketing and farmer-friendly reforms index to assess and encourage states to implement new rules.

At present, more than two-thirds of Indian states have not been able to reach even the halfway mark of reforms score in the year 2016-17.

3-Preparing for second Green Revolution

Increasing crop yields to feed 1.23 billion Indians is high on the agenda of the government. A task force, headed by Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya, also suggested ways of raising agricultural productivity and making farming remunerative for farmers. The panel suggested reforms in land leasing policies, ramping up of land records and land titles, preparing the country for the second “Green Revolution” in eastern states, and addressing farmers’ distress.

4-Cashless transactions

After the demonetisation of high-value notes in November, Niti Aayog has driven new initiatives to push Indians to go for digital payments. It has been training officials of various ministries, at the central and state levels alike, to adopt digital modes of transaction. It announced award programmes for businesses and individuals to use cashless transactions.

The Centre allocated Rs 50 crore to states for moving 5 crore no-frill Jan Dhan accounts to the digital platform.

5-Improving health, education and access to water

The plan panel came up with indices for measuring states’ performance in health, education and water management. The indices helping states gauge the results of social programmes, compete with each other and share best practices and innovations.

The Aayog also suggested clubbing various social programmes and centrally-sponsored schemes under 28 umbrella projects.

The panel suggested changes in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, skill development, poverty measurement.

NITI &Google

NITI Aayog is collaborating  with Google to foster growth in India's artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning ecosystem by working together. Under the aegis of the programme, Google will train and incubate Indian

AI startups in an accelerator programme. These startups will be mentored and coached by Google and its affiliates to enable them to better leverage AI in their respective business models.

Google will also bring its online training courses on AI to students, graduates and engineers to numerous cities across India in the form of study groups and developer-run courses.

The partnership will unlock massive training initiatives, support startups and encourage AI research through Ph.D scholarships, "all of which contributes to the larger idea of a technologically-empowered new India".

AI and machine learning hackathon –

Under the programme, NITI Aayog and Google will organise an AI and machine learning hackathon focused on solving key challenges within agriculture, education, healthcare, financial inclusion, transportation and mobility.

Crop yield prediction model

NITI Aayog and IBM signed a Statement of Intent (SoI- A formal statement that the author has a serious intention of doing something under specified conditions, and at a specified time)  to develop a crop yield prediction model using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide real time advisory to farmers in Aspirational Districts.

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries.

The partnership aims to work together towards use of technology to provide insights to farmers to improve crop productivity, soil yield, control agricultural inputs with the overarching goal of improving farmers’ incomes. 

Bringing in future technologies like Artificial Intelligence into practical use will have tremendous benefits for the practice of agriculture in the country, improving efficiency in resource-use, crop yields and scientific farming.

First phase of the project will focus on developing the model for 10 Aspirational Districts across the States of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The scope of this project is to introduce and make available climate-aware cognitive farming techniques and identifying systems of crop monitoring, early warning on pest/disease outbreak based on advanced AI innovations. 

Aspirational districts programme

NITI Aayog has in 2018 launched the baseline ranking for 117 aspirational districts. The broad ideas of the programme include –

I- Convergence of central and state schemes.

II- Collaboration of central, state level ‘Prabhari’ (in-charge) officers and district collectors.

III- Competition among districts.

The NITI Aayog has signed an agreement with the Lupin Foundation to collaborate in the government's ambitious aspirational districts programme which aims to quickly and effectively transform some of the most underdeveloped districts of the country.

As per the statement of intent, the NITI Aayog and Lupin Foundation will work in three states - Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan - to facilitate the creation of an ideal template to develop economic strength, technological viability and moral leadership across three districts in the first phase of the cooperation.

They will collaborate to improve indicators in education, health and nutrition, financial inclusion and skill development, agriculture and water resources, and basic infrastructure in the backward disticts, which the government has dubbed as aspirational districts.

The three districts include Dholpur in Rajasthan, Nandurbar in Maharashtra and Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh.

                                                                                                                    NITI Aayog and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

The Government of India set up a collaborative research program between NITI Aayog and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations to monitor India’s Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme.

NITI Aayog and W.B.

NITI Aayog, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) and technical support from the World Bank, has been working on  the Health Index initiative since 2017.

        NITI and  Zero Budget Natural Farming.

NITI is promoting ZBNF in India.

Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZNBF) is the practice of growing crops without the use of any external inputs, such as pesticides and fertilisers.

 The phrase “Zero Budget” refers to all crops with zero production costs.

The farmers’ revenue is increased as a result of ZBNF’s guidance towards sustainable farming methods that help to maintain soil fertility, assure chemical-free agriculture, and ensure a cheap cost of production (zero cost).

Under the NITI has promoted specific programme known as Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY), the government has been encouraging organic farming.

This programme supports all different types of chemical-free agricultural methods, including Zero Budget Natural Farming.

NITI &SDG”s(2015-30)

NITI Aayog has the twin mandate to oversee the adoption and monitoring of the SDGs in the country, and also promote competitive and cooperative federalism among States and UTs.

The NITI Aayog launched its index in 2018 to monitor the country’s progress on the goals through data-driven assessment, and foster a competitive spirit among the States and Union Territories in achieving them.

MDGs to SDGs: Top 08 Differences-

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) launched in 2000 there were 8 goals, TILL 2015 and the…….

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), launched in 2015-2030, they are 17when the MDGs expired.

Top Differences between the MDGs and the SDGs.

1- Zero Goals: The MDG targets for 2015 were set to get us “half way” to the goal of ending hunger and poverty, with similar proportional goals in other fields. The SDGs are designed to finish the job – to get to a statistical “zero” on hunger, poverty, preventable child deaths and other targets.

2- Universal Goals: The MDGs were in the context of “rich donors aiding poor recipients.” The SDGs will then be a set of goals applicable to every country.

3-More Comprehensive Goals: There were 8 MDGs …..SDG are 17 “Focus Areas” that go beyond the symptoms of poverty, to issues of peace, stability, ………….human rights and good governance.

4-Inclusive Goal Setting: The MDGs were created through a top-down process. The SDGs are being created in one of the most inclusive participatory processes the world has ever seen  ,with face-to-face consultations in more than 100 countries, and millions of citizen inputs on websites.

5-Distinguishing Hunger and Poverty: In the MDGs, Hunger and Poverty were lumped together in MDG1 – as if solving one would solve the other. So much has been learned about nutrition since that time .

 SDGs treat the issue of poverty separately from Food and Nutrition Security.

6-Funding: The MDGs were largely envisioned to be funded by aid flows – which did not materialize.

The SDGs put sustainable, inclusive economic development at the core of the strategy, and address the ability of countries to address social challenges largely through improving their own revenue generating capabilities.

7-Data Revolution: The MDGs said nothing about monitoring, evaluation and accountability – the SDGs target by 2020 to “increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts.”

8-Quality Education: The MDGs focused on quantity (eg, high enrollment rates) only to see the quality of education decline in many societies.

The SDGs represent the first attempt by the world community to focus on the quality of education – of learning – and the role of education in achieving a more humane world.

NITI &  Atal Innovation Mission-(AIM)

AIM is NITI’s flagship initiative began in 2016 ,to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.

Objectives-

Its objective is to develop new programmes and policies for fostering innovation in different sectors of the economy, provide platform and collaboration opportunities for different stakeholders, create awareness and create an umbrella structure to oversee the innovation ecosystem of the country.

Major Initiatives:

-Atal Tinkering Labs:

 These are creating problem solving mindset across schools in India.

It nurtures an innovative mindset amongst high school students across the length and breadth of India. This is an important government scheme administered under the NITI Aayog.

-Atal Incubation Centers:

 Fostering world class startups and adding a new dimension to the incubator model.

The incubation centres provides the start - ups with necessary guidance , tech support, infrastructure, access to investors, networking, and facilitating a host of other resources that may be required for the start - up to survive and scale.

-Atal New India Challenges:

 Fostering product innovations and aligning them to the needs of various sectors/ministries.

Atal New India Challenge is a flagship program of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog.

 The program aims to seek, select, support and nurture technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and societal relevance.

The vision of the Atal New India Challenge (ANIC) is two-fold:

• Help create products from existing technologies that solve problems of national importance and societal relevance (productization)
• Help new solutions find markets and early customers (commercialization) in the context of India

One of the primary goals of the ANIC program is to incentivize innovations in areas critical to India’s development and growth – Education, Health, Water and Sanitation, Agriculture, Food Processing, Housing, Energy, Mobility, Space Application etc.

-Atal Community Innovation Centres- serving unserved and under-served regions of India

To promote the benefits of technology-led innovation to the unserved/underserved regions of India including Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, aspirational districts, tribal, hilly, and coastal areas.

Criticisms of NITI Aayog

-Like PC, NITI Aayog too is a non-Constitutional, non-statutory body formed by a cabinet resolution. It is not accountable to parliament, and if line-ministries fail to achieve targets, NITI Aayog cannot punish them.

-NITI seems to be like an old wine in a new container .It replaced PC. Because the later was associated with Jawaharlal  Nehru &the party which ruled for 60 years .

-Niti Aayog  conflicts with Cabinet Secretariat (for inter-ministerial coordination) and constitutional body Inter State Council (for coordination with states).

-Fin Min officials always try to squeeze budget to keep the fiscal deficit under FRBM targets. Niti Aayog and its free market economists will further reduce welfare schemes to help them.                                                   

Multi-level planning

Multi-level planning (MLP) becomes important as it involves the participation of local institutions at all levels of the planning process.

The multi-level planning provides for the integration of top-down approach with the bottom-up approach. This is bound to get better outcomes.

Following are the various level of planning in India:

• Centre-NITI
• States- Planning Boards/commission
• Districts-DPC
• Blocks-Block level planning
• Villages-Village planning,
• Nahar Nigam ,Palika ,Nagar Panchyat.

It has following benefits-

-People centric administration-

MLP involves decision-makers at all spatial levels in the planning process through negotiations, deliberations, and consultations. This helps to create policies that are more relevant to the needs of the people.

-Better linkage-:

 MLP is expected to better linkage among  relevant sectors and ready access to required information, which would remove many implementation blockages.

-People’s participation:

 As a natural corollary to the decentralisation of planning, mechanisms for peoples’ involvement need to be intensively explored for each level for more ‘relevant’ policy since interests cannot be adequately articulated without the active participation of people who are the intended beneficiaries. 

Articulation at local levels could then be factored in policy proposals. 

-Cost-effective operations:

 Multi-level planning is expected to make operations cost-effective by providing better linkages between relevant sectors and ready access to required information, which would remove many implementation blockages.

- Reduction of regional disparities:

MLP is expected to reduce regional disparities and bring more equity in development by providing an opportunity for local development planners to tailor the macro plan to the specific needs of their area.

-Fight against corruption: 

Corruption has been another persistent problem. For example, the main problem with poverty alleviation programs has been the identification of beneficiaries and articulation of their needs, which has been far from orderly. Omissions/commissions alleged/inadvertent have largely thwarted efforts. 

Issues with MLP in the neo-liberal paradigm:

-Conflict in vested intrests

-Different party rule at  Centre, state and district  leads to turbulence in decision making .

Role of savings in economic development

Capital formation the most important factor that drives the economic development  mainly rests on  the transfer of savings from households to the business sector that leads to increased output and economic expansion.

In India, savings has contributed to around 33% of GDP.

Savings coupled with startups culture ,innovation , sound banking and financial boost the GDP of a nation.

 factors  essential for growth potential are-

Infrastructure: 

Sound infrastructure is needed in terms of good supply of power, electricity, roads, railways and robust means of communication.

Sprit of capitalism

The Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC)

The Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) is a non-statutory apex council under the Ministry of Finance constituted by the Executive Order in 2010.

Chaired by -

It is chaired by the Finance Minister and its members include the heads of all Financial Sector Regulators (RBI, SEBI, PFRDA- Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority  & IRDA), Finance Secretary, Secretary of Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Secretary of Department of Financial Services (DFS), and Chief Economic Adviser.

The objective of FSDC is to-
1 Strengthen and institutionalize the mechanism for maintaining financial stability.
2 Enhancing inter-regulatory coordination and promoting financial sector development.
3 Monitor macro-prudential supervision of the economy.
4 It will assess the functioning of the large financial conglomerates.

Green Accounting

Green accounting is a type of accounting that attempts to factor environmental costs into the financial results of operations.

NITI is promoting Green Accounting in India.

The major purpose of green accounting is to help businesses understand and manage the potential quid pro quo(a favor for a favor") between traditional economic goals and environmental goals.

How is green accounting used?

Green accounting helps promote a sustainable future for businesses as it brings green public procurement and green research and development into the big picture.

Penalties for polluters incentives for envirment friendly practices.

National Investment and Infrastructure Fund Limited (NIIFL) 

NIIFL is an investment platform in NITI era  for international and Indian investors .

The objective behind creating this organisation was to catalyse capital into the country and support its growth needs across sectors of importance.

 NIIFL was approved in August 2015 by the Department of Economic Affairs .

It is the first sovereign wealth fund of India.

NIIFL is registered with SEBI  As of September 2020, the NIIFL manages funds of over USD$4.34 billion

Chairmen-

The Governing Council of the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) is chaired by the Hon’ble Finance Minister of India and has members from corporate bodies, investments and policy sectors.

The Governing Council meets once a year and provides suggestions of the overall strategic decisions of the NIIFL.

The Governing Council is currently chaired by Hon’ble Finance Minister of India Nirmala Sitharaman, Finance Minister of India.

NIIF manages three funds: Master Fund, Fund of Funds and Strategic Fund.

The funds were set up to make investments in India by raising capital from domestic and international institutional investors.

Master Fund

The Master Fund is an infrastructure fund with the objective of primarily investing in operating assets in the core infrastructure sectors such as roads, ports, airports, power etc.

Fund of Funds

The Fund of Funds anchor and/or invest in funds managed by fund managers who have good track records of delivering returns to investors.

The Fund invests in several sectors including green energy, social infrastructure, mid-income and affordable housing, technology, and others.

Strategic Opportunities Fund

Strategic Opportunities Fund invests in growth equity and provides long-term capital to strategic and growth-oriented sectors in the country with the aim to build domestic leaders.