NITI Aayog ensuring ease of doing business: Panagariya

NITI Aayog is playing an active role in ensuring ease of doing business in the country, its vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya said here today.
Addressing the two-day conference on 'Cooperative Federalism: National Perspectives and International Experience', Panagariya defended the decision to replace the Planning Commission by NITI Aayog saying it was a "landmark" decision.
NITI Aayog is playing various roles particularly in the area of ease of doing business. Survey of entrepreneurs is being done to ascertain the areas where entrepreneurs see the improvement has been made or not, he said.
Panagariya said the central government is welcoming the states which want to make changes in their land laws and a model law on land-leasing is being framed with discussions with states.

"We now need tenancy laws from owner as well as tenant's point of view," he said.
The NITI Aayog vice-chairman said under the PRAGATI initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, regular meetings are held with Chief Ministers and Chief Secretaries via video conferencing and the progress made on various projects specially infrastructure projects is discussed.

The states have now power of decision-making. As we move forward, the states will be the masters of their fate. Different states have different priorities and this should be kept in mind while making schemes, he said.
The conference provided a platform to identify the best practices from other countries and come out with recommendations including changes in institutional mechanisms to foster cooperative federalism in Indian context.

This was the first conference in the country where the subject of cooperative federalism was discussed at the international level.
In addition to the senior policy makers and officials from central and state governments, academics and practitioners and think-tanks in India and international experts from Australia, Ethiopia, Germany, Switzerland, South Africa and Canada also participated in it.