Niti Aayog CEO, Amitabh Kant on Thursday stressed on the need for rankings of states based on their performance to focus on growth and development of the country, saying rankings and competitions are interlinked and can bring about great change in the social structure of India.
Kant who was one of the Key note speakers at the India’s National Competitiveness Forum in New Delhi on Thursday also said that one of the big things in Modi government is that they have moved away from inputs and processes to outcomes, which hold key to success.
“To my mind, the only way we can improve is when we force our states to compete, and we are able to measure its growth. The business of measuring states on outcomes and on regular competitive basis can give real outcomes. My belief is that we should not merely rank states but also put the rankings out in public domain. The electorate should measure state performances and throw out governments which are not performing well,” Kant said in his address.
India is currently growing at a rate of 7.6 per cent. 72 per cent of the country’s population is below 32 per cent. In the past two and a half years 1175 irrelevant laws have been scrapped by the Government.
Kant, the author of Branding India – An Incredible story, said a good thing that has been born out of ease of doing business is that the government has also started ranking districts on the basis of cleanliness.
“Following this the Ministry of Urban Development ranked districts on the basis of cleanliness and this had a revolutionary impact on states like Uttar Pradesh when the new CM came in he has driven all the district magistrates to change the faces of districts and make them the best performing on the basis of cleanliness.”
Talking about the key challenges in India’s economic growth Kant said that while the current rate is 7.6 it is not possible to grow at a faster rate till India doesn’t improve on Education, health and nutrition.
“Unless you don’t transform at least seven to eight states in India it is impossible to achieve the benefit of the window of transition and it is not possible to achieve the benefit of the window of transition, and it is impossible for India to achieve social progress.”
“NITI’s objective is to transform, challenge all districts and not only to challenge but also to handhold them and to act as a facilitator, as a catalyst. In the next three years we pick up their states to work in partnership with them to help to transform but we will only pick up states which have the political and the administrative will to transform”, he added.
Discussing the importance of Education in the growth and development of the country, he said that even though the spectrum and access to education in India have widened the quality of education has drastically fallen down which is a big challenge.
The event also covered sessions “The idea of competitiveness”, and “Social Progress” by Michael Porter.
