Mid term assessment of the niti aayog

Mid term assessment of the niti aayog

Has the Niti Aayog proved a worthy successor to the Planning Commission? The question is a natural corollary to the surprise departure of its first boss midway through his tenure.
The answer is not straightforward. It is difficult to claim that the Aayog has emerged as the go-to institution for solving economic problems that the Centre and the states confront.
Not that the Aayog has been lax about initiating proposals and schemes. Some of its policy recommendations on energy and regulation of healthcare do make a lot of sense, but these have not found traction with the arms of the government charged with formulating and implementing policy.
Unless a policy recommendation carries the explicit imprimatur of the Prime Minister, it is not taken with the seriousness its intrinsic merit might warrant — this is the hard reality. But this does not mean that the Aayog has failed. Where the Aayog has found a unique role for itself is in monitoring outcomes in some key areas such as health, education and water management.
The Aayog holds regular meetings with chief secretaries of states and with secretaries of the concerned departments, to monitor progress on outcome milestones.
States that are found wanting risk losing funds for new projects in that sector while states that show eager progress are assured greater funds. Since the days of formula-linked Plan assistance are history, money from central ministries would flow to those states that demonstrate the will and the ability to implement schemes.
This leads to healthy competition among states. The Niti Aayog, through its regular monitoring of projects in key areas, becomes a platform for articulating what some would call competitive federalism, besides for the monitoring of key projects.
In this, it shares a key feature of the erstwhile Planning Commission: the exercise of central authority that is not part of the constitutional scheme of things. Its remedy lies in the policy, with the states discharging their assigned functions with their resources, including statutory transfers from the Centre.