Finding Niti in Niti Aayog
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Niti Aayog falters on policy ideation
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, July 17: Tenures of the vice-chairman, CEO, and members of the NITI Aayog are co-terminus with the prime minister. On June 5 this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s resignation was accepted by President Droupadi Murmu.
The Central government waited for another 41 days to issue the notification of the appointments of the vice-chairman, the chief executive office, and members of the Niti Aayog. In between, the Niti Aayog hosted a meeting of economists with the prime minister.
Also, the Niti Aayog announced date for the next meeting of the Governing Council. While the Niti Aayog had been going in ‘business as usual’ manner, it appears that the government finally remembered that the people in the leadership positions in the think tank need to be re-appointed. The prime minister is the chairman of the Niti Aayog.
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The government on Tuesday evening re-appointed Suman Bery as the vice-chairman, while retaining all existing persons in their existing roles. The notification will ensure that no question would be asked now on credibility of the officials when they host the meeting of the Governing Council, consisting of all the chief ministers and Cabinet ministers.
In 2019, this author had asked the prime minister to share his assessment of the Niti Aayog during an interview. “Four years are too short to asses an entity which replaced Planning Commission which had been in existence for several decades,” Modi had said.
Now, the Niti Aayog is approaching 10 years of existence. One decade should be tool long a time frame to assess a policy think tank.
“The least that is said about the Niti Aayog will be better. The greatest disservice that the Niti Aayog has done to the nation is denying the availability of the time-series of data. Now, anyone can say anything, because data has lost its credibility,” said Amit Bhaduri at the India International centre (IIC) during an interaction this month.
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Bhaduri is an internationally acclaimed economist, while he rubbed his shoulders with Manmohan Singh during his academic days. The septuagenarian economist mocked at Niti Aayog for its track record.
The prime minister, while constituting the Niti Aayog as a replacement of the Planning Commission, had mandated it to draw up short-term, mid-term, and long-term plans. The short-term (Three Years Action Plan) was still born.
After much cajoling, late Arun Jaitely had given as much legitimacy to the paper by just releasing it at a function where everyone looked disinterested. The states denied the Niti Aayog even the semblance of the role of policy advocacy.
The mid-term and the long-term plans were never conceived by the Niti Aayog. Indeed, it was lately busy in drawing a plan for the centenary celebrations of India’s independence.
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The Niti Aayog had also drawn out a list of sick, non-performing, and non-strategic public sector units for outright sell to the private entities. The management of a PSU dug its heels against proposal to sell the entity at a “throwaway price”. Reuters recently reported that privatization is now not on the agenda of the government.
Among Members, Ramesh Chand holds the area of agriculture. His advocacy of centralizing agrarian laws brought the farmers from Punjab at Delhi borders with Haryana, forcing the prime minister to apologise on television and withdraw three contentious laws passed by parliament.
The prime minister had also tasked the Niti Aayog to persuade the states to adopt the model land leasing law. This also died in infancy.
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