Five years after being set up, NITI Aayog remains a work in progress

As the Modi govt enters its second term, NITI Aayog will need to deliver at many more levels than it so far has, more so at a time when the country faces one of its worst economic slowdowns

It was in his first Independence-Day Speech as Prime Minister that Narendra Modi announced the abolition of the decades-old Planning Commission of India and replaced it with a brand new body called the NITI Aayog (NITI is an acronym for 'National Institution for Transforming India').

A formal Cabinet decision on the move came on January 1, 2015. Noted economist Arvind Panagariya was appointed the first vice-chairman of NITI Aayog, while career bureaucrat Amitabh Kant was its Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

At the very outset, policymakers were clear that unlike the Planning Commission, NITI Aayog wouldn’t have fund allocation powers and