Niti Aayog starts ranking of ‘aspirational districts’

New Delhi: Government think-tank Niti Aayog on Wednesday launched the baseline ranking for the 115 backward districts, which have been described as “aspiration districts”. The ranking would be done on the basis of 49 indicators across five developmental parameters of health, education, agriculture, financial inclusion and basic infrastructure.

Official sources said that from May 2018, the ranking of these districts will begin on the basis of their incremental progress on these parameters.

Speaking to media persons, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant informed that the dashboard which the think-tank has prepared for monitoring the progress of these 115 “aspirational districts”, will get activated from April 1 and will conduct real-time data collection.

“We want to create competition at the state, district and even the block level. Why do some districts lag behind in terms of human development while other districts in the same state excel? Bridging this ‘distance to frontier’ is key to ensuring the states’ prosperity and the nation’s progress,” said Mr Kant.

The “Transformation of Aspirational Districts” programme which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 5 this year, aims to bring about socio-developmental changes in these backward districts which have been chosen from all states of the country. District magistrates of these districts have been made ‘prabhari’ officers, who will implement the parameters under the programme. They will be assisted in this task by additional secretaries of central ministries in the national capital.

With states as the main drivers, this programme will focus on the strength of each district, identify low-hanging fruits for immediate improvement, measure progress, and rank districts, official sources informed further.

The dashboard has been prepared with the help of Andhra Pradesh government, which was the first state to prepare such a software for monitoring of its own districts.