Strategy for New India @75’: NITI AAYOG

Strategy for New India @75’: NITI AAYOG

News:

1. NITI Aayog unveiled its comprehensive national ‘Strategy for New India @75’, which defines clear objectives for 2022-23.

Important Facts:

2. About:

• It is a detailed document of India’s growth story covering forty-one crucial areas and highlights the progress already made, identifies binding constraints, and suggests the way forward for achieving the clearly stated objectives.
• The overarching focus of the Strategy document is to further improve the policy environment in which private investors and other stakeholders can contribute their fullest towards achieving the 2022 goals and propel India towards a $5 trillion economy by 2030.
• It aims to bring innovation, technology, enterprise and efficient management together, at the core of policy formulation and implementation.
• It will encourage discussion and debate, and invite feedback for further refining policies. The document aims to spark public participation for achieving economic transformation i.e. development must become a Jan Andolan.

3. The document has been disaggregated into four sections: Drivers, Infrastructure, Inclusion and Governance.

4. Drivers: This section focuses on the engines of economic performance with chapters on growth and employment, doubling of farmers’ incomes; upgrading the science, technology and innovation eco-system; and promoting sunrise sectors like fintech and tourism.

• Aim: To achieve an inclusive, sustained, clean and formalized GDP growth rate of 8% on average during 2018-23 and to 9% by 2022-2023 and tax-to-GDP ratio to 22%. This would raise the size of economy in real terms from $2.7trillion in 2017-18 to nearly $4 trillion by 2022-23.
• Measures:
• Increase the investment rate as measured by gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) from the present 29% to 36% of GDP by 2022.
• In agriculture, emphasize on converting farmers to ‘agripreneurs’ by further expanding e-NAM and replacing the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act with the Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing Act.
• Give a strong push to ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’ techniques like organic farming, mixed farming etc.
• Ensure maximum employment creation, complete codification of labor laws and to upscale and expand apprenticeships.
• Labour Market Information System (LMIS) should be made functional for identifying skill shortages, training needs and employment created.
• National Policy for Domestic Workers needs to be formulated at the earliest to recognise the rights of domestic workers and to promote better working conditions.
• Enhance female labour force participation by ensuring employers’ adherence to the recently passed Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Work Place (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act.
• Overhauling the labour dispute resolution system to resolve disputes quickly, fairly and at low cost and strengthening labour courts/tribunals for timely dispute resolution.
• Launch a mission “Explore in India” by revamping minerals exploration and licensing policy.

5. Infrastructure: Deals with the physical foundations of growth which are crucial to enhancing the competitiveness of Indian business.

• Measures:
• Expedite the establishment of the Rail Development Authority (RDA), which will advise or make informed decisions on an integrated, transparent and dynamic pricing mechanism for the railways.
• Double the share of freight transported by coastal shipping and inland waterways through focus on viability gap funding.
• Develop an IT-enabled platform for integrating different modes of transport and promoting multi-modal and digitized mobility.
• With the completion of Bharat Net programme in 2019, all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats will be digitally connected, following which government should aim to deliver all government services at the state, district, and gram panchayat level digitally by 2022-23.

6. Inclusion: It focuses on investing in the capabilities of all citizens covering three dimensions of health, education and mainstreaming of traditionally marginalized sections of the population.

• Measures:
• Focusing on successful implementation of Ayushman Bharat program including the establishment of 150,000 health and wellness centres across the country, and rolling out the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Abhiyaan (PM-JAY).
• Promote integrative medicine curriculum by creating a focal point for public health at the central level with state counterparts.
• Upgrade the quality of the school education system and skills; including the creation of a new innovation ecosystem by establishing at least 10,000 Atal Tinkering Labs by 2020.
• Creating an electronic national educational registry for tracking each child’s learning outcomes.
• Give a huge push to affordable housing in urban areas to improve workers’ living conditions.

7. Governance: Streamlining governance structures to achieve better development outcomes.

• Measures:
• Implement Second Administrative Reforms Commission recommendations and appoint a new commission for designing reforms in the changing context of emerging technologies and growing economic complexities.
• Set up a new autonomous body, viz., the Arbitration Council of India, to grade arbitral institutions and accredit arbitrators to make the arbitration process cost effective, speedy and to preempt the need for court intervention.
• Address the backlog of pending cases by shifting part of workload out of regular court system.
• Expand the scope of Swachh Bharat Mission to cover initiatives for landfills, plastic waste and municipal waste and generating wealth from waste.

To achieve the goals of New India in 2022-23, it is important for the private sector, civil society and even individuals to draw up their own strategies to complement and supplement the steps the government intends to take. With the available tools of 21st century technology, it should be possible to truly create a mass movement for development. With the Sankalp of all Indians, India will have Siddhi.