NITI Aayog

NITI Aayog
Agency overview
Formed 1 January 2015 (2015-01-01)
Preceding
Jurisdiction Government of India
Headquarters New Delhi
Agency executives
Parent agency Government Of India
Website www.niti.gov.in

NITI Aayog' (Hindi: नीति आयोग), or the National Institution for Transforming India is a Government of India policy think-tank established by the Narendra Modi government to replace the Planning Commission. The stated aim for NITI Aayog's creation is to foster involvement and participation in the economic policy-making process by the State Governments of India.The emphasis is on bottom-up approach and make the country to move towards cooperative federalism . The Union Government of India announced the formation of NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015, and the first meeting was held on 8 February 2015. The Prime Minister serves as the Ex-officio chairman.

History

On May 29, 2014, the Independent Evaluation Office submitted an assessment report to Prime Minister Modi with the recommendation to replace the Planning Commission with a "control commission". On August 13, 2014, the Union Cabinet scrapped the Planning Commission, to be replaced with a diluted version of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of India. On January 1, 2015 a Cabinet resolution was passed to replace the Planning Commission with the newly formed NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India). The first meeting of NITI Aayog was chaired by Narendra Modi on February 8, 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 In this context, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to economic planning is obsolete.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." [1]

Niti Lectures

Niti Aayog has started new initiative on the advise of Prime Minister Mr. 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 series of lectures started with first lecture[2] delivered by Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam. He delivered lecture on subject called "India and global economy" at Vigyan bhawan, New Delhi. Prime Minister spoke about the idea behind this lecture series and stated that his vision for India is rapid transformation not gradual evolution.[3]

Members

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chief Ministers in December 2014.jpg

The NITI Aayog comprises the following:

  1. Prime Minister of India as the Chairperson
  2. A Governing Council composed of Chief Ministers of all the States and Union territories with Legislatures and lieutenant governors of other Union Territories.
  3. 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.
  4. Full-time organizational framework composed of a Vice-Chairperson, three 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.
  5. Experts and specialists in various fields [4]

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the Chairperson, the committee consists of

  1. Vice Chairperson: Arvind Panagariya [5]
  2. Ex-Officio Members: Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Suresh Prabhu and Radha Mohan Singh
  3. Special Invitees: Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Zubin Irani and Thawar Chand Gehlot
  4. Full-time Members: Bibek Debroy (Economist),[6] V. K. Saraswat (former DRDO Chief) and Ramesh Chand (Agriculture Expert)[7]
  5. Chief Executive Officer:Amitabh Kant[8]
  6. Governing Council: All Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors of States and Union Territories

References

  1. ↑ "'We will use every provision in the Constitution to push reforms'". OPEN Magazine.
  2. ↑ "Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates 'NITI Lectures: Transforming India'".
  3. ↑ "Niti Lectures".
  4. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 July 2015. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  5. ↑ "Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya in RBI Governor race", Deccan Chronicle, 20 June 2016
  6. ↑ "Scrap railway budget: Niti Aayog panel", The Times of India, 22 June 2016
  7. ↑ "Agriculture expert Ramesh Chand appointed as Niti Aayog member | Business Standard News". Business-standard.com. 2016-06-18.
  8. ↑ "Niti Aayog extends deadline for research labs by a month", The Economic Times, 15 June 2016
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