Niti’s Detailed Outcome-Monitoring Will Make Governance Deliver

Perhaps the most difficult question a Delhi-based journalist writing on economic policy has to constantly field is this: what exactly does the Niti Aayog do?

Well, there is some good news for those who despaired of the Aayog falling into the same traps of plans, though Amitabh Kant, CEO of the body that replaced the Planning Commission, tries hard to convince that the drawing up of a 15-year vision document, seven-year plans and a three-year mid-term review is different from the earlier five-year plans. “The Planning Commission did not have a vision document,” he points out.

Where the Aayog is decidedly different is in being at the centre of efforts to ensure that the government delivers on its programmes and policies. The Prime Minister periodically reviews progress of various ministries and sectors and he does not rely on inputs from ministries for these. Instead, the Aayog is engaged in outcome-based monitoring across sectors, and this forms the basis for presentations made to the Prime Minister.

Consider what’s covered in roads – highways built, projects awarded, projects completed, congestion hotspots that need to be tackled, upgrading of railway crossings and bridges, prioritising of bypasses, tolling stations, truck waiting time, time taken at check posts, to list just a few parameters. Similar minute monitoring has been done in education and health (the first sectors to be taken up) and railways.

“This is hard core private sector monitoring. This is the way business organisations are run”, Kant told Swarajya in an exclusive interview, adding that this is the first time such detailed outcome-based monitoring has been done in the government.

It is difficult not to concede this point to him. P. Chidambaram had initiated an outcome budget exercise in his stint as finance minister during the first United Progressive Alliance government. The idea was similar – let us see whether the money allocated is being used for what it was meant to. But individual ministries had to do this and after some initial fanfare, the exercise petered out.

The ministry of statistics and programme implementation has, for more than a decade, been monitoring progress on infrastructure projects of various sizes. But these reports, which come with a lag of at least a year, merely list delayed projects and the reasons. A slightly more detailed infrastructure monitoring exercise was started within the Planning Commission during Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s tenure as deputy chairman, but that too did not help.

Why will the current exercise also not go down the same road? It could, but chances seem dim right now. Because after the review by the Prime Minister, detailed minutes are issued, with action points. Each action point has a set of action steps, responsibility fixed on an individual official and a very tight deadline. Dashboards are then created, which are monitored on a monthly basis.

Over time, financial releases by the finance ministry to states for central sector and centrally sponsored projects could be linked to performance on specified outcomes. Earlier, the responsibility of quarterly monitoring of performance by states (which needed to submit utilisation certificates) and recommendation to the finance ministry to release funds lay with individual ministries. Now an additional monitoring will be done by the Aayog. Under the earlier system, ministers could play politics with fund releases; that may not be possible now with such detailed monitoring.

This certainly sounds promising, since much of the problem with governance in India is that of delivering results on the ground. The reason a large number of infrastructure projects are inordinately delayed is the lack of a project management approach within the government, barring a few exceptions like the National Thermal Power Corporation (which pioneered this approach in India), Bharat Heavy Electricals etc. And one cannot help agreeing with Kant when he fields a question about micro-management with, “the problem in India is not of policy, it is implementation, implementation, implementation, and monitoring holds the key.”

And yet, in the case of, say, education and health, there is a need for recasting the role of the government; the project monitoring approach is only focussed on getting the existing system to deliver better. “But the state cannot get out of health and education,” Kant counters. It can do so in business, he concedes, and points out that the competition among states on ease of doing business is beginning to deliver results. The Aayog is working on a similar competition among states in education, health, water, sanitation.

One of the roles that the Aayog was supposed to perform was to act as a kind of think-tank for policy. As part of this, it will soon be organising a Niti lecture series. A brainchild of the Prime Minister, Kant says the idea is to get international experts to speak on issues that the country is wrestling with. The first lecture could be as early as August.

Earlier, apart from vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya’s presentation to the government on a coastal area led development strategy, the Aayog has put out papers on various issues ranging from agricultural productivity to skill development. It has also conducted a series of workshops with states on education, urban management and health.

Is there any point in advocating policies which will not later be followed? “We take a stand on what we think is the right thing for the country. We look at global best practices and convergence across ministries. Our objective is to provide the right inputs to the Prime Minister and his office to push through the right decision on several issues,” says Kant.

Could the Aayog be as central a body as its predecessor once was? It will be bigger, says Kant, but in a creative, constructive and positive manner. Even now, it is, he says, involved in almost every major issue. “Niti Aayog will be the major change agent for driving India’s growth. The vigour and energy there is here is not there anywhere.”