'Name and shame' helped improve states' business rankings: Amitabh Kant

The NITI Aayog was speaking on how real-time data management can help in the economic growth process

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Wednesday said some states have improved in terms of ease of doing business after they were ranked very low on an index, as he credited the change to "name and shame".

Speaking at a session here at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Kant said he is a great believer in "name and shame" and that seemed to do the trick for poorly ranked states.

Talking about the government's focus on improving ease of doing business across the country, Kant said, "When we started ranking states on ease of doing business, we saw that the states that were ranked lower in first year, they started improving later."

He was speaking on how real-time data management can help in the economic growth process.

"We are doing this with real-time monitoring of data and now we are going to rank districts. We are doing these rankings on different parameters," Kant said.

He said the data is not designed by government officials but by independent entities like Tata Trusts and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

This real-time data is helping capture the reforms undertaken by the concerned state on a continuous basis and results in an appropriate change in the rankings.

He explained how real-time data monitoring is proving to be a game-changer in improving outcomes in health, education and financial inclusion for the people of India.

He said the government is using indices to achieve development goals and making states compete with one another.