{"id":36012,"date":"2018-11-01T13:07:57","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T07:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=36012"},"modified":"2018-11-01T13:07:57","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T07:37:57","slug":"niti-aayog-an-institution-to-fix-implementation-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/niti-aayog-an-institution-to-fix-implementation-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"NITI Aayog: An institution to fix implementation issues:\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.livemint.com\/Opinion\/EpV8XyCfKKTdndWWiqrMZL\/NITI-Aayog-An-institution-to-fix-implementation-issues.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NITI Aayog: An institution to fix implementation issues<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Context:<\/b><\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">NITI Aayog is responsible of monitoring and evaluating government schemes but its performance is below par<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Introduction:<\/b><\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">In his last month\u2019s radio address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appreciated the importance of constructive criticism in strengthening democracy and the government\u2019s performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Background:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Governments in the past have devised different mechanisms to facilitate monitoring and evaluation.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An independent evaluation office was set up under the earlier regime but wound up after this government assumed office.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Role of NITI Aayog:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NITI Aayog is engaged in outcome-based monitoring with states in sectors such as healthcare, education, and water supply.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is now mooting the idea of ranking each state based on health, education, and water index, and identifying \u201cchampion states\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has developed a composite water management index, comprising several key performance indicators, with different weights assigned to indicators.<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">This is expected to incentivize states to collect data and analyse it to make better policies.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">The approach of measuring and monitoring progress through ranking and encouraging competition among states is akin to the approach adopted in promoting ease of doing business reforms.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Loopholes:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Reforms remain mostly on paper with key concerns remaining unaddressed.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Such approach might result in a race to the bottom, as legitimate beneficiaries get excluded by lowering targets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">The vision at the top level of polity and bureaucracy is unable to percolate to the middle and entry levels, resulting in limited change on the ground.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Impediments to implementation include capacity constraints, inadequate resources, lack of incentives to perform, no disincentives for non-performance, absence of policy and regulatory clarity among others.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Solutions:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">The government needs to realize that a business-as-usual approach will work no more, and it needs a comprehensive strategy to transform implementation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Such strategies much comprise working with key stakeholders to identify implementation related challenges and design solutions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">A rigorous independent ex-ante and ex-post assessment of solutions is necessary.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Experts suggest that significant improvement in the ability to implement policies and projects in the states, cities, and the centre can considerably add to citizens\u2019s well-being and could even add about 2-3% to the country\u2019s gross domestic product (GDP), without any additional resources.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">NITI Aayog will need to design customized solutions depending on the impediment.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">A policy or regulatory bottleneck could require regulatory impact assessment to identify superior regulatory alternatives<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">convincing incumbents and political losers for reform could require implementation of transformation change methodology<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Customized training could be needed to deal with capacity constraints.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">There could be vertical and horizontal coordination challenges which would require NITI Aayog to act as catalyst to enhance implementation capabilities and improving outcomes, rather than merely measuring them.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Agencies grappling with implementation should not be burdened with additional responsibilities of data collection and analysis.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Independent agencies could be engaged to collect granular data and design different scenarios.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Conclusion: <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">It is high time that NITI Aayog realizes it needs to metamorphose into an organisation which can transform implementation of policy reforms. The development monitoring and evaluation office at NITI Ayog is presently responsible for monitoring and impact evaluation of currently funded programmes. However, there are yet to witness significant improvement in this domain. Independent monitoring and evaluation is important but not sufficient to ensure the success of policy reforms.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">Identification of constraints like inadequate resources, lack of incentives to performs, no disincentives for non-performance, absence of policy and regulatory clarity etc would require NITI Aayog to have more eyes and ears on the ground. NITI Aayog could leverage available local skills for providing independent inputs and feedback<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400; color: #000000;\">All above strategy can help NITI Aayog to achieve its objective of transforming India.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NITI Aayog: An institution to fix implementation issues:\u00a0 Context: NITI Aayog is responsible of monitoring and evaluating government schemes but its performance is below par Introduction: In his last month\u2019s radio address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appreciated the importance of constructive criticism in strengthening democracy and the government\u2019s performance. Background: Governments in the past have&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/niti-aayog-an-institution-to-fix-implementation-issues\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">NITI Aayog: An institution to fix implementation issues:\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704717123},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}