The government on Thursday adopted a resolution to constitute the National Institution for Transforming India (Niti) Aayog, replacing the 65-year-old Nehruvian Planning Commission, which will serve as a policy think-tank for the Central as well as the state governments and have Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its chairperson.
The move was met with strong criticism from the Opposition, which said the move is just “fluff” and mere “gimmickry”. It also expressed apprehension that the new body will pave the way for discrimination as “corporates will call the shots” in policy-making in the country.
The Aayog will be headed by a regular vice-chairperson with the Prime Minister being the ex-officio chairperson. There would also be a set of full-time members and also two part-time members and all of them are likely to be drawn from fields of different expertise. The Planning Commission, known as a socialist-era institution, instead had a deputy chairperson.
In place of a member secretary in its previous avatar, the new body will have a chief executive officer (CEO) and, in addition, four Union ministers would serve as ex-officio members. The Aayog will have a governing council, which will comprise of the chief ministers of all states and lieutenant-governors from Union Territories (UTs) and will work towards fostering a “cooperative federalism” to provide a “national agenda” to the Centre and states. This council will replace the National Development Council, which used to meet under the aegis of Planning Commission.
In place of NDC meetings, there will now be meetings of specific regional councils with chief ministers and lieutenant-governors of UTs of a particular region as its members and such meetings can only be convened by the Prime Minister.
The Aayog will serve as a “think-tank” of the government as “a directional and policy dynamo” and would provide governments at the Centre and in states with strategic and technical advice on key policy matters, including economic issues of national and international importance.
The Niti Aayog follows Mr Modi’s announcement in his Independence Day speech in August 2014 that there is a need to replace the Planning Commission with a new body keeping in view the changed economic scenario.
The government has set up the new body through a Cabinet resolution. As per the resolution, the Niti Aayog will provide a “national agenda” for the Prime Minister and chief ministers to foster cooperative federalism while recognising that “strong states make a strong nation”.
It will also interact with other national and international think-tanks, as also with educational and policy research institutions.
Source : The Asian Age
