GS Paper 2 15 July 2022

Discuss the importance of NITI AAYOG in achieving the targets of social justice. 10 marks

Est. writing time: 12–15 min

Word count: ~322 words

India after independence affected by major problem in the form of social inequality, inflation, caste subjugation and unequal land holding with high amount of exclusion. Therefore, guided by USSR, India adopted socialism and social justice.

[A Diagram showing how PIDI helps in achieving self-reliance, self-sufficiency and equity which in turn results into social justice]

In 1950, for planning towards social justice, India came out with an institution called planning commission but it was affected by problem of conflict with Finance Commission, over monetary power, no constitutional and executive backing and high discrimination among the states. Even different plans reflected different ideologies of government without any homogenous aims and vision.
Therefore, after 2014, the government came out with a new organization by the name NITI Aayog (National Institution of Transforming India). NITI Aayog is a nodal agency to achieve social justice because:
No monetary power except think tank from various fields of policy making.
instead of five-year plans, a medium-term plan by the name NITI Aayog@75
Bottom-up planning instead of up-down planning.
More focus on cooperative to competitive federalism to make states independent.

NITI Aayog over time came out with various federal reports like in education, health, sustainable development report to further enhance competitive federalism and region-specific policy.

NITI Aayog with the help of its think tank for the first time independently talked about the measures like:

Atal innovation Mission by linking industry with academia
Monetization of national assets to utilize this money for infrastructure development though infrastructure pipeline network.
Regional planning
Aspirational districts
Inclusion of new technologies like Artificial intelligence and drones.
Therefore, NITI Aayog is working to make India a country under the fourth stage of Rostow’s growth model without compromising with the principles of sustainable development, equality and equity and making the country self-reliant.