Current Affairs GS F223Assignment 1

Name : Hardik GuptaId : 2013B3A3435P

In 1950,Jawarhar Lal Nehru the then prime minister to industrialize the Indian agrarian economy set up YOJNA AYOG but Narender Damodar Modi replace that with the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Ayog). Few points because of which I thought setting up NITI ayog is one step further in right direction of development of country. First of all the new National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) will act more like a think tank or forum and to execute programs by working with states not for states. This is in sharp contrast with the Planning Commission whose main focus is to impose five-year-plans and allocated resources that too on various basis that are not correct for current time like population. Mr. Arvind Panagariya, a famous economist is appointed as the CEO this is a good sign that they have named the Institutes head as a CEO rather thana Chairman which gives it a more corporate feelthus stating they are here to work and to change. Main highlights of resolution are like India is continuously working on alleviation of poverty but it say time has come to eliminate it by clearly stating Poverty elimination remains one of the most important metrics by which alone we should measure our success as a nation.. The main agenda is on pro-people agenda resolution believes in citizens participation, all-round women empowerment, equality of opportunity to the youth and most importantly transparency of work . Main idea behind is that strong states make strong country, this new commission will build mechanism for planning at village level and thus aggregate the needs for further levels. Moreover there are many shortcomings of planning commission that are not related to policy making. Now Planning commission has emerged as a second cabinet, with the Prime Minister as the head. This had become threat to democratic environment of the country. In the UPA years, the Planning Commission and the environment ministry became weapons to harass non-Congress states with, By denying them non-Plan expenditure. The Commission is populated by bureaucrats. These people aregeneralists. The Planning Commission needed to be populated by experts in specific subjects and the NITI ayog has done pretty good in this field. Thus according to me replacing Planning commission with the NITI ayog is betterment for the country in spite of critisim from various political parties groups commenting it as a public stunt and it just the hindi translation of the previous commission.