What is the major impediment to India's growth? It's not a lack of resources but rather the failure of governance, said NITI Aayog CEO, Amitabh Kant. He said that he is a great believer in data as it can drive development and growth via a competitive setup. "I am a great believer in real-time data and ranking. I am a great believer in naming and shaming people and telling them they are performing badly and I am a great believer in rewarding those who perform well on data. Every scheme of the Government of India should have a minimum of 33 per cent earmarked for those who perform well," said Kant. He was speaking at the launch of IIM-A's Public Talk Series, on public policy related matters, titled India 2031: The Decade of Transformation on November 11.
Kant said that it would not be possible for a country with low learning, health and nutritional outcomes to grow very fast. "I feel that it's not possible for India to grow at high rates over a long period of time without a huge focus on learning outcomes and health outcomes. And more importantly, nutrition — you cant grow a nation where one in two women are anaemic or one in three children are stunted. It's not possible. It's not because of the failure of resources — we are spending a lot of resources — it's the failure of governance. We are still functioning in silos and are not being able to converge," said the retired IAS officer.
Kant said that it has become easier to compare or track a district's progress with real-time data being made available. "India has now been able to create the basic framework called the Indiastat where everyone has a biometric database, mobile phones and bank account. When I was a district collector and had no idea whether my district was going up or down — there was no data available. Whatever was there was from around 5 years back. Now, it is possible for you to be able to actually capture data. I am a great believer in the fact that governance in this country can improve on the basis of good data. If you are able to access data in real-time and put it in the public domain they will perform. We are putting the data on the district collector's face and telling them how they are performing. Aspirational districts are now competing with each other to some are even performing better than the non-aspirational districts," he added.
