India, go into history! It is 'New India' under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but the concept of 'planning' is still there.
Describing Budget 2018-19 as the 'New India Budget', Rao Inderjit Singh, minister of state for planning, on Wednesday claimed the NITI Aayog had been “predominant in the planning of Ayushman Bharat, the world's largest health insurance scheme.”
Singh was addressing the media to talk about the 20 per cent increase in the allocation for the planning ministry embodied by the NITI Aayog in the budget, compared with 2017-18.
The minister emphasised that the budget had “cemented NITI Aayog's role as a driver of transformational change in the country,” and said it envisaged a defining role for the Aayog in critical areas of artificial intelligence and agriculture policy.
The minister declined to be drawn into a conversation on the NPAs of banks and their recapitalisation, when asked if more regulatory measures were in order.
He attributed this to the fact that the process was still under way.
Singh said it was “too soon to talk or even think of reducing the government's stakes in public sector banks,” and actually privatise them, along the lines being suggested by many including trade bodies and chambers of commerce.
Talking about disinvestment, Singh said NITI Aayog has recommended that 40 PSUs be disinvested, and while four reports had been tabled on this, the fifth was in the making.
NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said that while government expenses on railways and roadways had gone up, they were now “seeing green shoots of private sector investment.”
Flagging the use of high-end technology like block chain and artificial intelligence purely in areas of development, Kant said they planned this to be used for ensuring transparency in land records and agriculture (where NITI Aayog was collaborating with ISRO and IBM), judicial cases and electronic medical reports.