New Delhi,Dec.19: The NITI Aayog on Wednesday unveiled its comprehensive national Strategy for New India, which defines clear objectives for 2022-23.
It is a detailed exposition across forty-one crucial areas, that recognizes the progress already made, identifies binding constraints, and suggests the way forward for achieving the clearly stated objectives.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley released the ‘Strategy for New India @75’ at a press conference in the presence of NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar, Members Ramesh Chand and VK Saraswat and CEO Amitabh Kant.
Drawing inspiration and direction from the Prime Minister’s clarion call for establishing a New India by 2022, NITI Aayog embarked on a journey of formulating the Strategy document over the last year.
In his foreword the Prime Minister says, “The Strategy for New India @75 put together by NITI Aayog is an attempt 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 our policy approach.We believe that economic transformation cannot happen without public participation. Development must become a Jan Andolan.”
NITI Aayog followed an extremely participative approach in preparing the strategy. Each area vertical in NITI Aayog had in-depth consultations with all three groups of stakeholders, viz., business persons, academics including scientists, and government officials.
This was followed by consultations at the level of the Vice Chairman with a diverse group of eminent persons from seven sets of stakeholders that included scientists and innovators, farmers, civil society organizations, think-tanks, labor representatives and trade unions, and industry representatives.
Central Ministries were brought on board for inputs, suggestions and comments, with each draft of individual chapters being circulated for consultations. The draft document was also circulated to all the States and Union Territories from whom valuable suggestions were received and incorporated.
Over 800 stakeholders from within the government – central, state and district levels – and about 550 external experts were consulted during the preparation of the document.
Prasanta Patnaik