Aspirational Districts Programme

Why in news?

NITI Aayog has recently launched the baseline ranking for 115 aspirational districts.
This is in line with the Aspirational Districts Programme (ADP) announced earlier by the Prime Minister.

What is ADP?

It aims to quickly and effectively transform some of India's most underdeveloped districts.
It will identify areas of immediate improvement, measure progress, and rank districts.
The broad ideas of the programme include -

convergence of central and state schemes
collaboration of central, state level ‘Prabhari’ (in-charge) officers and district collectors
competition among districts

The states are the main drivers in the programme.
Deliberately, the districts have been described as aspirational rather than backward.
The motive is to view them as areas of opportunity and hope rather than of distress and hopelessness.

How were the districts selected?

The 115 districts were chosen by senior officials of the Union government.
This was in consultation with State officials on the basis of a composite index.
The parameters included are -

What is the present ranking on?

A minimum of one district was chosen from every State.
Apparently, the largest concentration of districts is in the States which have historically under-performed.
This includes states such as UP and Bihar, or which are afflicted by left-wing extremism such as Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
The present ranking would be followed by delta ranking of these districts based on their "incremental progress".

How is progress monitored?

NITI Aayog in partnership with the government of Andhra Pradesh has created a dashboard.
This is for monitoring the real-time progress of the districts.
District collectors of all the aspirational districts can input the latest available data of their respective districts.
The dashboard will also be open to the public.

What are the significant aspects of ADP?

Approach - This is the first time India’s most backward districts are being focussed.
ADP is a better vision of how public services are best delivered to those who need them the most.
Governance - Achieving success in this programme necessitates the contribution of all 3 tiers of government.
The role of states is important in terms of facilitating resource, personnel, etc.
On financial inclusion, the full cooperation of banks is necessary and only the Central government has leverage over them.
The most crucial is the role of District Magistrate or Collector.
As s/he is familiar with the challenges of his or her geography and has considerable power to implement government schemes.
Competitive federalism - The spirit of cooperation needs to be supplemented by a culture of competition.

ADP takes the principle of competitive federalism down to district administrations.
Civil society - ADP has opened its door to civil society and leveraged the tool of corporate social responsibility.
This will bring new ideas and fresh energy from non-government institutions, to join the “official” efforts.
Efficiency - Many schemes of the Centre have flexible spending components, permitting autonomy at local level.
But these are seldom used in practice due to controlling Central and State machineries.
Thus ADP focusses on not spending more but spending better.
There is no financial package or large allocation of funds in ADP.
It only aims at leveraging the already existing resources of several government programmes, to use them more efficiently.
Smart data - Data collection is often delayed or lacking in quality in India, distorting the development policy efforts.
With real time data in ADP, those on the ground level can alter strategies after accurate feedback.
In a way, the ADP reorients how government does its business of delivering development.

Source: The Hindu, Economic Times

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Prabhari Officer