What is the full form of NITI AAYOG

NITI AAYOG: National Institute for Transforming India

NITI Aayog stands for National Institute for Transforming India. Looking at the background of NITI Aayog, NITI Aayog evolved out of the Planning Commission that was established in 1950. The NITI Aayog performs the most crucial role in the nation's plan. The NITI Aayog restored the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission and the NITI Aayog have the same function but different working methods. The NITI Aayog was started by closing down the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission was based on the socialist model.

After independence, the Planning Commission was accepted for the organized evolution of India. The purpose for restoring the Planning Commission was that in the period of globalization, especially in the 21st century, it was becoming ineffectual and immaterial, especially in handling critical evolution challenges. There are so many reasons behind this. One is that the Planning Commission is more authoritative than NITI Aayog. Therefore, throughout Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day conversation on 15th August 2014, Prime Minister Modi spoke about the closing of the Planning Commission. Abolishing the Planning Commission was not a difficult task. It was an executive body and was abolished by executive order, and in its place, the NITI Aayog, the executive body, i.e., a Non-constitutional body, was established. A body is not needed by law. On 1st January 2015, the Planning Commission was restored by NITI Aayog. The main intention of NITI Aayog is to issue the needed technical advice to the union government relating to policy creation at the central and state levels.

Niti Aayog is a non-constitutional body. Its headquarter is in Delhi. The primary function of this Aayog is to advise the government on social and economic issues as the government will make plans that will be in the people's interest. The NITI Aayog is the Union government's think tank. The Niti Aayog thinks and decides what the government should and should not do, which could be better.

The job of NITI Aayog is to give planning policies to the government. The structure of NITI Aayog is in the following way:

1. India's prime Minister is the ex-officio chairman of NITI Aayog, and he assigns the vice chairperson of NITI Aayog.

The first chairperson of NITI Aayog was Arvind Panagariya.

The current vice chairperson of NITI Aayog as of June 2022 is Shri Suman Bery.

The NITI Aayog has a governing council. The vice chairperson of NITI Aayog heads the governing council. The governing council consists of all the people, like the state's chief minister and union territory administrators. A regional council is like a governing council. The governing council is for the whole country, while the regional council is only for the regional parts, like the north and eastern states. There is an administrative council that manages the administration.

The Planning Commission has two main functions: the Five Year Plan and allocating funds to the States and Ministries. That is the allotment of capital to states and ministries. The first Five Year Plan was launched in 1951. And it continued till 1956. A total of 12 Five Year Plans were implemented. The last 12th Five Year Plan ran from 2012 to 31st March 2017. After that Planning commission abandoned the Five Year Plans. NITI Aayog does not have a five-year plan and allotment of capital to states and ministries.

Narendra Modi eliminated the task of distributing money. That work belongs to the Ministry of Finance. NITI Aayog has been divided into two hubs. The first hub is the Team India hub. And second is the knowledge and innovation hub. The task of the Team India hub is to organize teamwork between the states and the centre. The task of the knowledge and innovation hub is to find out how NITI Aayog can improve and make it better. NITI Aayog has a CEO. The present Chief Executive Officer of NITI Aayog as of 2022 is Shri Parameswaran Iyer.

Major Functions of NITI Aayog

1. To encourage the active involvement of states in national development.
2. To develop planning techniques at the rural level of India.
3. To provide technical advice to the Center and the States on national and international issues.
4. To promote cooperative federalism.

NITI Aayog executes schemes and initiatives for rural development. Niti Aayog works for economic strategy and policy in the matter of national security. It invents innovation and the upgradation of technology. The main intention of Niti Aayog is sustainable and equitable development and plans to distribute all resources for development. One of the functions of NITI Aayog is the complete utilization of potential. NITI Aayog doesn't want to waste resources, so it utilizes resources on account of development.

Supporting India's pool of entrepreneurial, scientific, and intellectual human capital is the aim of NITI Aayog. By implementing new ideas and innovations, we can develop the Economy of India. So NITI Aayog helps to implement these ideas and increase India's pool of Entrepreneurship by providing funds and many more. The purpose behind this is to transform and develop India.

Niti Aayog brought many important initiatives for developing and transforming India.

New Initiatives by Niti Aayog

1. Atal Innovation Mission

The task of Atal's innovation mission is to invent innovations for Transforming India. This revolution is named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The main motive of this innovation is to strengthen the country's innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.

2. Task Force on the Elimination of Poverty

NITI Aayog adopted this task force on 16th march 2015 to eradicate poverty in our country. This task force works on the issue of measuring poverty and strategies to combat it. Nowadays, poverty in India is increasing day by day because of many reasons; one of them is Covid-19 Pandemic.

3. Task force on agricultural development

India's rural ecosystem is huge and growing continuously. India's rural economy is dependent on the agriculture sector. Even now, 42 to 43 per cent of India's population works in the agriculture sector. Therefore, a task force was adopted on 16th March 2015 to develop the agriculture sector of India.

The major purpose of this task force is to expand productivity. Due raise in productivity will benefit farmers' income. This task force aimed to bring a second green revolution to our country. The first green revolution took place in 1966 and impacted only a few states where there were irrigation facilities such as Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. The impact of the first green revolution was not felt all over India. The second green revolution focused on Eastern states. Niti Aayog adopted this task force to bring about a green revolution and develop the agriculture sector in the eastern states, i.e., Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura.

4. Digital payments movement

The main objective of this movement is to help India to become Digital India; India should focus on technologies. NITI Aayog constituted a committee on 30th November 2016 to bring technologies and digital payments to India. The motive of this is to promote transparency, financial inclusion, and a healthy financial ecosystem.

5. Transforming India Lecture Series

Its main objective is to transform India. NITI Aayog wants to build a knowledge system for the Centre and states by providing lecture series. The lecture series is very important because it has experts from each department who give us advice, opinion, decision, and views so we can develop ourselves.

6. Urban Infrastructure

Here, NITI Aayog aims to develop urban infrastructure along with the agriculture sector. Transforming India is possible only when urban infrastructure is developed. In this public-private partnership, Municipal finance innovations are used for developing urban infrastructure.

7. Regional Council

The work of the regional council is to develop some regional states. Like Himalayan state regional council. This council works to develop the Himalayan state. The regional council works for sustainable development.

8. Artificial Intelligence

The technology that exists should not only be used by the highly educated and rich but should benefit all people. So this initiative promotes the adoption of the local language. This will enable all the people of India to benefit from the technologies.

The following are recent proposals and interventions of NITI Aayog -

A. Roadmap for ethanol blending in India 2020-25

• Sugarcane-based and grain-based ethanol production capacities shall have to be augmented to enable a pan-India rollout. Ethanol would need to be supplied with ethanol blends in the country.
• DPIIT may formulate a system for individual window clearances to give rapid clearances for new and expansion projects for ethanol production. Production of a greater number of ethanol-compatible vehicles should be encouraged, and the vehicles compliant with higher ethanol blends should be provided with tax benefits.
• The ethanol production from maize and other low water consulting feedback may be encouraged. NITI Aayog has provided the inputs for all these under the Roadmap for ethanol blending in India 2020-25.

B. Creating a Roadmap for a digitally inclusive Bharat

• NITI Aayog has a requirement for strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks. This aims to build information sharing systems, including a "fraud repository". Diversifying credit sources to permit growth opportunities for MSMEs. Allowing agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and display a "phygital" (physical+digital) model for achieving finer long-term digital results.
• Digitalizing land records will also provide a major boost to the sector with minimal crowding and queues, supporting existing smartphones and contactless cards. All this comes under the role of NITI Aayog.

C. Creating an enabling environment for women-led enterprises

• Through the Women entrepreneurship platform (WEP), NITI Aayog has been actively working towards developing a conducive entrepreneurial ecosystem necessary for women entrepreneurs to fulfil their goals.
• WEP will target to expand communications with women entrepreneurs to acknowledge their needs better and necessities as the platform is a method for developing existing partnerships and creating new collaborations.

D. Investment opportunities in the health sector

• A developed telemedicine market also has the potential for future export of healthcare services. Affordable and quality healthcare can be enabled by Artificial Intelligence, wearables, and other mobile technologies, as well as the Internet of Things. NITI Aayog has also presented this proposal.
• Digital health can improve results for people suffering from multiple co-morbid situations because of the possibility of distant observing of health status and conveyance of virtual care services through smartphones and artificial data solutions.
• Patient-encountering mobile health applications could also be evolved, permitting a larger combination of AI, robots, and blockchain technologies, e.g., surgical robots, sensors, remote diagnostics, electronic records, and observing systems.

E. Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture

• In this report, NITI Aayog has presented a draft policy that allows individuals to "absolutely and safely access their data and share it with third-party Institutions".
• The reports look to permit institutions to share personal data through the idea of "consent managers," which will handle people's permission for data sharing.

F. Poshan Abhiyan

The prime Minister's overreaching plan for entire nutrition or POSHAN Abhiyan or the national nutrition mission is the government of India's biggest program to upgrade nutrition results for children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers.

G. Strategy for New India

Niti Aayog's comprehensive national strategy for new India is a detailed exposition of forty-one crucial areas that recognize the process of already made identified binding constraints and suggests the way forward for achieving clearly stated objectives for 2022-23.

H. India Knowledge Hub

• Niti Aayog has created an India knowledge hub(IKH), a dynamic web portal, functioning as a repository to store and circulate best practices from across the country.
• Niti Aayog started the India knowledge hub so that districts, states, central ministries, and other government organizations can interchange knowledge on a real-time basis and duplicate practices.

I. Transforming India's gold market

• A board on "Transforming India's Gold Market" was conducted by NITI Aayog to develop this sector and provide a stimulus to transport, economic growth, and employment. The committee brought together diverse stakeholders, including relevant ministries, departments of the Government of India, Reserve Bank of India, industry association, and academia, to look into multiple aspects of the gold market.

J. Samavesh

• 'Samavesh' is a plan started by the NITI Aayog to link multiple lead knowledge and research organizations to bring out evolution processes, increase organizations' capacity development and permit a field-level terminal with the community for mutual enrichment.
• Through this initiative, NITI Aayog looks to grow and increase its organizational capacity through networking and partnerships with respected knowledge & research organizations to build an ecosystem of proof-based policy research.

Other Initiatives

In 2019, NITI Aayog Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Kant approved an initiative, "Holistic Development of Identified Islands", for the evolution of islanders on the ecologically protected isles of Lakshadweep as well as Andaman and Nicobar.

In 2019, an MoU was endorsed between NITI Aayog and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for observing and examining Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) to assess the effect of the Food Security Policy in Bihar and Chhattisgarh and to evaluate the effect of the National Agricultural Marketing Policy (eNAM) in Haryana and Odisha.