A Review of the Aspirational Districts Program of The National Institute of Transforming India, Government of India

Abstract

This paper reviews the recently launched Aspirational Districts Program of the Government of India. It opens with a review of the Human Development Index formulated by the United Nations Development Program which aims to go beyond the traditional measure of per capita income as a measure of human development to encompass the broader development of a nation’s population to include health, education and income. India’s ranking in the human development remains low at the bottom 30% of all nations highlighting the disparity between India being regarded as one of the fastest growing economies and still having one of the largest poor populations in the world. In the backdrop of this disparity, this is a review of the Backward Regions Grant Fund which was launched by the Panchayati Raj, Government of India in 2006 to reduce the regional imbalances across 272 backward districts in 28 states. This was seen as a large scale initiative to this effect at the time. A review of this after several years showed that whilst there was the availability of funds, the average utilisation was low at 23% across the districts with low investment in productive assets overlapping with other flagship programs where funds were also available, highlighting the non-uniformity in progress and development. After 10 years, in 2016, this program was discontinued. The Aspirational Districts Program was launched in 2018 by the Government of India in the newly established think tank National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog that replaced the erstwhile Planning Commission with the aim of achieving sustainable development goals for India. The program has highlighted the 115 most backward districts out of 615 districts to reduce the regional imbalances. The program has a cooperative federalism approach whereby central and state governments target to work collaboratively to reduce and improve the baseline ranking of district development with real time data on 49 indicators across 5 thematic sectors including Health & Nutrition, Education, Infrastructure, Financial Inclusion and skill development at its core and working alongside civil agencies and experts in respective fields is seen as a dramatic and progressive step incorporating the learning and suggestions from the Backward Regions Development Fund and suggestions from independent agencies including the World Bank. The program is vastly different in its scale, scope and ownership and increases competition between backward districts and encourages better utilisation of existing resources but faces several challenges in its implementation including governing mechanism, incentivising district development via cooperative federalism, data collection and accuracy to reflect actual socio-economic development, dealing with Naxalite and left wing extremist districts amongst others. The implementation and progress of the program will test the not just the district’s but the nation’s resolve in reducing the socio-economic gap in the most backward districts in the world’s second most fastest growing economy with could positively change the trajectory of India’s in its post-Independence era.