What are the Functions of NITI Aayog?
NITI Aayog stands for National Institution for Transforming India, formed on 1 January 2015 through a Union Cabinet resolution to serve policy inputs. It plays a vital role in the development process of the country. After the formation of NITI Aayog, the Planning Commission of India was immediately replaced from its position.
The commission designs strategic policies and gives technical suggestions to States, centre, and Union territories. You can learn about the objectives of the National Institution for Transforming India in the write-up below.
Evolution of NITI Aayog
NITI Aayog was established on 1 January 2015. The Sanskrit language defines “NITI” as morality, guidance, and behaviour. However, in present terminology, it refers to policies, and the full-form stands as “National Institution for Transforming India.” The premier-policy-making institution boosts the overall economic growth of India through its various programmes.
Moreover, it focuses on building powerful states to help the nation become more secure and indestructible. It helps the country to turn into a significant prudence nation across the world. The institution consists of two primary hubs called “Team India Hub” and “Knowledge and Innovation Hub.”
- Team India Hub: The Team India Hub ensures the involvement of Indian states with the central government and fosters cooperative federalism along the way. Also, the hub mandates the creation of policies and programmes to evaluate and resolve sectoral issues.
- The Knowledge and Innovation Hub: The knowledge and Innovation Hub is mainly responsible for constructing an institution’s think tank capability. It includes a systematic study of practical governance activities, good practices, passing on suggestions, etc. The hub also motivates the team to form a fellowship with universities and non-governmental institutions.
The think-tank institution is developing itself as a state-of-art-resource centre with the help of required resources, knowledge, and skills. It helps them entitle their speed, innovation, and advanced research programmes to manage unforeseen issues.
The Union Cabinet formed the NITI Aayog, as the general public expected the administration to enhance their system by their involvement. It includes some organisational changes and strategy implementation that can bring out notable marks in the system.
Composition of NITI Aayog
A NITI Aayog comprises of following members:
- Chairperson: Prime Minister of India is the Chairperson NITI Aayog
- Governing council comprises the Chief Minister of all Indian states and Lt. Governors of Union territories
- Special Invitees: A Prime minister invites these members, including prominent experts who acquire the domain skills and knowledge of the NITI Aayog
- Other institutional members: It includes the Vice-chairman of NITI Aayog, NITI Aayog CEO, four members of the minister council and other part-time members appointed by the Prime Minister
Objectives of NITI Aayog
NITI Aayog works for the systematic functioning of the institutional system. Below are the objectives regulated by NITI Aayog CEO and NITI Aayog Chairman.
- Promotes cooperative federalism by initiating structural support systems and strategies for partnership between central and state governments
- It constructs several mechanisms to develop village-level plans and combine their progress with government level plans
- The NITI Aayog unfolds national development sectors prior, creates strategies, and ensures active participation of state governments in the process
- The planning institution ensures national security to take an interest associated with their economic policy and strategies
- NITI Aayog builds long-term policy and its framework, takes required initiatives, and evaluates progress and efficacy accordingly
- The results received from monitoring are taken for improvements and corrections
- The Transforming India institution pays special heed to societal areas that are not receiving any benefits from its economic progress
- It gratifies to form fellowship between stakeholders, national and outside nation’s think tanks, including policy research and educational institutions
- To develop the latest innovations, upgrade the knowledge and pioneering support systems with the help of a collaborative group of national and international practitioners, experts
- It provides a platform to solve inter-departmental and inter-sectoral problems and implements a development plan
- It balances the state-of-the-art resource centre by conducting prominent research on effective governance, and good practices for workable development
- The institution also helps in the dispersal of its stakeholders
- The institution actively examines the application of initiatives and programmes
- It includes discovering required resources to increase the scope of delivery and success possibilities
- Provides technological upgradation and strengthens the capacity for application of programmes and policies
- Handling activities involving the implementation of the national development plan and its objectives
Pillars of NITI Aayog
The seven pillars of NITI Aayog present in an institutional system are-
- Pro-people: Pro-people are responsible for fulfilling the desire of society and individuals
- Pro-activity: It involves the prediction of feedback on general public needs.
- Participation: Participation describes the involvement of the general public.
- Empowering: It means providing support to women in all aspects.
- Equality: Equality is the foremost important pillar of NITI Aayog, which gives an equal opportunity to the youth to change the structure of the Indian economy.
- Inclusion of all: It is also an essential pillar of the institutional systems as it serves every individual no matter what caste, creed, and gender they belong to.
- Transparency: It refers to building a transparent and responsive government for the country’s citizens.
Conclusion
The National Institution for Transforming India, i.e., NITI Aayog, is a policy think tank formed for ensuring the implementation of government policies and programmes. The Union Cabinet formed it to serve policy inputs and information to the citizens or officials. In addition, the institution acts as a think tank of governance practices that mainly focuses on forming partnerships with key stakeholders, non-governmental, educational, and research institutions.
Moreover, it tends to develop transparency and equality for the people who cannot receive the benefits of economic progress. They do so with the help of special invitees and other members of the NITI Aayog team and implement efficiency in their work culture.