The Government of India recently reconstituted the NITI Aayog or National Institution for Transforming India, its apex public policy think tank, appointing a new vice chairperson and members. Earlier, a secretary had been given additional charge as its chief executive officer. The next meeting of the Governing Council under its new leadership is, thus, an opportune time for a holistic review and reassessment of NITI’s successes, achievements and shortcomings to enable it to better drive India’s progressive and rapid development within a fraught global environment.
Replacing the Planning Commission in 2015, the NITI Aayog was set up to monitor the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and promote cooperative and competitive federalism. Its core objectives include evolving a shared vision of national priorities with states, fostering cooperative federalism through structured support, and developing mechanisms for credible village‑level plans to be developed at an aggregated level. It is tasked to design policy frameworks, provide a resource centre for governance, and monitor programme implementation.
A decade into its operations, it seems dissociated and out of touch with evolving geo-economic compulsions.
Several notable initiatives have been undertaken over the years by the Aayog, which operates through 33 sectoral and administrative divisions. The divisions’ work extends to policy papers, programmes and projects and research publications, which are keenly awaited by economic researchers for their analytical depth and insights.
The Aspirational Districts Programme, launched in 2018, outlined 49 key performance indicators across five socio-economic domains and tracks progress across 112 identified backward districts, following up on catalysing actions to help them catch up. A 2023 assessment of the programme highlighted its benefits in encouraging districts to make progress on the indicators, and provided recommendations for better data collection and strengthening its outcomes.
The Atal Innovation Mission, set up in 2016, establishes ‘tinkering’ laboratories in schools, and supports incubation centres in universities and other organisations for innovation and entrepreneurship. Several other initiatives such as Shoonya for tackling air pollution through electric vehicles, Women Entrepreneurship Programme, and e-Amrit, among others, have been launched, with varied progress.
The Aayog also convenes stakeholders for consultations on developing policy suggestions on key developmental issues, and brings out data-based reports each month on sectoral areas, offering comprehensive overviews and possible policy actions. However, its recommendations are purely advisory and not always reflected in final government policy decisions. It is likely that some of its specific recommendations are not placed in the public domain, and it should consider being more transparent as a nodal point for policy ideation.
A Frontier Tech Hub outlines breakthroughs in frontier technologies in tackling complex developmental challenges. This appears to be a compilation of positive stories on technology usage in areas such as urban development, agriculture, health and education put together by a media organisation that specialises in feel-good narratives. The connect of these stories with NITI Aayog’s activities is tenuous at best.
NITI Aayog’s role proliferates in certain areas while remaining inadequate in others. The distinction between its role as a think tank focusing on research and analysis, and as a body conducting programmes must be made clearer, perhaps with more emphasis on research rather than on activities.
Further, outcomes are weak in its intended role as an intermediary between the central and state governments and as a facilitator of common action programmes among states. Although ten Governing Council meetings have taken place over the last decade, an overtly political agenda and the absence of certain state chief ministers has detracted from success of cooperation initiatives.
The website of the institution could, for one, be regularly updated to provide better guidance on how it is serving national development. For example, under cooperative federalism, it mentions that a task force on agricultural development was set up in 2015, and a paper was published in December that year. No further information is available after that.
The health and family welfare division shows a total of two reports published since 2022, and mentions the Ayushman Bharat School Health Mission as a project but its progress does not appear in a search. The Industry and Foreign Investment Division, likewise, includes reports from 2024 among its most recent publications. Its report on electronics has various policy recommendations, but it is not clear how many of these fed into actual policies such as simplifying and streamlining tariffs of components.
NITI Aayog could also better compile social and economic data that is currently scattered across the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), other ministries, state governments and various organisations. The erstwhile Planning Commission provided a valuable resource for mapping progress in a range of social and economic indicators across time and the lack of comparable data remains an analytical gap.
As a governmental think tank aimed at strategic convergence of developmental policies, NITI Aayog must be positioned as a forward-looking and trendspotting economic research hub that will apprise policymakers of emerging challenges and opportunities and enable data-driven policymaking in central and state governments. It must be closely attuned to geopolitical developments, India’s economic vulnerabilities, social compulsions, and potential risks.
Only then will it be able to truly align with India’s imperatives, rather than remain a parking place for well-connected individuals. The reconstituted leadership now faces the challenge of transforming NITI Aayog into a truly influential policy catalyst.
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