NEW DELHI: What is in a name? Whether it is Yojana Ayog (Planning Commission) or NITI Ayog. The Yojana Aayog planning India’s progress since 1950 is being replaced by the new institution promised by Narendra Modi in his Independence Day address. It gets the name NITI as the acronym for National Institution for Transforming India.
It will, however, be doing more or less the same job and will have the Prime Minister as its chairman and his nominee as its vice-chairman as it also used to be with the Planning Commission. Montek Singh Ahluwalia was the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission while it will be well-known economist Arvind Panagariya (62) occupy the same position now as a vice chairman in the NITI Ayog.
A 2883-word long Cabinet resolution on setting up this institution calls it a “Think Tank” of the government or a “directional and policy dynamo,” providing governments at the central and State levels relevant strategic and technical advice across the spectrum of key elements of policy.”
“This includes matters of national and international import on the economic front, dissemination of best practices from within the country as well as from other nations, the infusion of new policy ideas and specific issue-based support,” says a government press release announcing replacement of the Planning Commission with the new institution in the New Year, transforming into a reality what Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced in his Independence Day address to the nation from the Red Fort ramparts.
Modi took the chief ministers into confidence on December 7 to go ahead with the new institution to strengthen “cooperative federalism” by promoting the concept of “Team India,” noting that even then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on April 30 last year that the current structure of the Planning Commission has “no futuristic vision in the post-reform period”.
The Cabinet resolution invokes Mahatma Gandhi on constant development in life, BJP ideologue late Deen Dayal Upadhyaya for Antyodaya or uplift of downtrodden, Swami Vivekananda, Constitution’s architect Dr Ambedkar and Tamil poet and philosopher Thiruvalluvar to let the NITI Ayog act as the “pillars” that provide a “Bharatiya approach to development.” It prescribes 13 objectives on which the NITI Ayog has to remain focused.
It dubs the Planning Commission becoming irrelevant on the ground that the country has transformed from an under-developed economy to be an emergent global nation with one of the world’s largest economies and at the heart of the dynamics of transformed India lies a technology revolution.
Noting that the state governments do not want to be mere appendages of the Centre but seek a decisive say in determining the architecture of economic growth and development, the resolution says: “The one-size-fits-all approach, often inherent in central planning, has the potential of creating needless tensions and undermining the harmony needed for national effort. It quotes Dr Ambedkar’s foresight that it is “unreasonable to centralise powers where central control and uniformity is not clearly essential or is impracticable.”
It says: “An important evolutionary change from the past will be replacing a Centre-to-state one-way flow of policy by a genuine and continuing partnership with the states. The institution must have the necessary resources, knowledge, skills and, ability to act with speed to provide the strategic policy vision for the government as well as deal with contingent issues.
“To evolve a shared vision of national development priorities, sectors and strategies with the active involvement of States in the light of national objectives. The vision of the NITI Aayog will then provide a framework ‘national agenda’ for the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers to provide impetus to.”
There is no change in the organisational set-up as it is not different from that of the Planning Commission with the Prime Minister remaining its chairperson, but the difference lies in its government council comprising the chief ministers of all states and Lt governors of union territories and fixed-tenure regional councils to address specific issues impacting more than one state or region. The new institution leaves scope for the PM nominate experts, specialists and practitioners with relevant domain knowledge as special invitees.
The full-time organisational framework, however, is not much different from that of the Planning Commission as it envisages the PM as the chairperson, his nominee as the vice-chairperson, full-time members, rotational part-time members, four union ministers as ex-officio members, a chief executive officer for a fixed tenure in the rank of the secretary to the Centre and the usual secretariat.
The resolution says the role of the government in achieving ‘national objectives’ may change with time, but will always remain significant as it will continue to set policies that anticipate and reflect the country’s requirements and execute them in a just manner for the benefit of the citizens.
It talks of seven pillars on which will rest the “effective governance in India” that talks of fulfilling aspirations of society as well as individuals, anticipating and responding to their needs, involve citizens’ participation, empower women, inclusion of all groups, equality of opportunity to the youth and transparency through technology to make the government visible and responsive.
The new body is for governance across the public and private domains, the Cabinet resolution says. “Everyone has a stake in ensuring good governance and effective delivery of services. Creating Jan Chetna, therefore, becomes crucial for people’s initiative. In the past, governance may have been rather narrowly construed as public governance. In today’s changed dynamics – with ‘public’ services often being delivered by ‘private’ entities, and the greater scope for ‘participative citizenry’, governance encompasses and involves everyone.”
