Policy-making not elitist activity; rooted in ground reality: NITI Aayog VC Rajiv Kumar

NITI Aayog's new Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar, who assumed charge of office earlier today has said that policy making is not an 'elitist activity', but that requires wholesome participation, even from the grass-root level of society.

Addressing his first press conference as the new Vice Chairman here, Kumar said that development should be a mass movement, and must involve collective participation and effort from all strata of society.

"Policy making is not an elitist activity-it is rooted in ground reality. Development should be a mass movement, and must involve efforts from all strata of society," he said.

Re-iterating Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stance on cooperative and competitive federalism, Kumar highlighted that the same must be intertwined in the functioning of NITI, and stressed on greater convergence of the Centre with state governments and their functioning.

"Our Prime Minister has spoken time and again on cooperative federalism. This needs to be brought into NITI's functioning. Governance capacity needs to improve at the state level. Ministries are far too involved in their own work, and therefore cannot cater to the states' needs. This has to be given shape in NITI, to bring states and centre at the same page," said Rajiv adding that the involvement of external advisors in NITI would enable greater private-public partnership.

He further said that the NITI Ayog is aiming to establish and institutionalize partnerships with its counterparts at state level.

With regards to the employment situation, Rajiv stressed on the need to exploit India's demographic dividend and generate jobs that fulfill the aspirations of the country's youth.

"We need to develop our own module of growth, first step being to generate employment. While we speak of demographic dividend, we need to find jobs that meet the aspirations of youngsters, for which assessment of demand is critical," he said.

On the agricultural front, Rajiv stated that agriculture sector needs a technological revamp and highlighted a distinct gap in the ratio of the number of people employed in the sector to the output produced.

Kumar was appointed as the Vice Chairman of the Centre's think tank following the resignation of Indian American economist Arvind Panagariya on August 1, as he was returning to the United States to resume his academics.

In his previous role, Kumar served as a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, a non-governmental think thank on public policy.

Kumar holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow University.