PM seeks suggestions for priorities that could transform the nation

Setting the agenda for the NITI Aayog, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked chief ministers to suggest new ‘national priorities’ that can ‘transform’ India and has proposed a committee of chief secretaries to give a necessary push to the infrastructure sector, apart from pursuing labour and economic reforms.

Updated on: Feb 7, 2015, 01:47:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Setting the agenda for the NITI Aayog, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked chief ministers to suggest new ‘national priorities’ that can ‘transform’ India and has proposed a committee of chief secretaries to give a necessary push to the infrastructure sector, apart from pursuing labour and economic reforms.

The 50-point background note circulated to all chief ministers for the first meeting of the governing council of the NITI Aayog on Sunday also mentions about a dozen flagship programmes initiated by the UPA government such as Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Integrated Child Development Scheme, in a paragraph.

However, the emphasis appears to be on 12 programmes initiated by Modi such as Swachh Bharat, Skill India, Digital India, Clean Ganga, Make in India, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sanchiyi Yojana to which most of the background note has been devoted.

The states’ suggestion has also been asked on expanding the Clean Ganga concept to some other polluted rivers in western and southern India and to make the smart cities project a reality. The note also talks about how Make in India is an opportunity for the state governments to spur economic growth.

In line with Modi’s ‘cooperative federalism’, the note proposed setting up of a committee of chief secretaries to remove bottlenecks in implementation of the infrastructure projects in the proposed framework of the NITI Aayog.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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