Which of the following is a Nodal Institution for implementation of Sustainable Development Goals in India ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, NITI Aayog. When India joined the rest of the world in adopting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations in September 2015, the Government of India assigned the coordinating role for the Sustainable Development Goals to NITI Aayog — the National Institution for Transforming India, created by a Cabinet resolution with effect from 1 January 2015 to replace the Planning Commission. NITI Aayog's SDG mandate is specific and documented: it mapped each of the 17 Goals and 169 targets on to central ministries, centrally sponsored schemes and flagship programmes so that responsibility for every target has an owner; it works with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, which maintains the National Indicator Framework used to measure progress; it led India's first Voluntary National Review presented at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum in 2017; and it produces the SDG India Index, first released in December 2018, which scores every State and Union Territory against the Goals and has become the standard scoreboard for sub-national performance. States and Union Territories mirror this arrangement with their own nodal departments and SDG cells. Note the wording of the option carefully: NITI Aayog is the coordinating and monitoring institution — the actual delivery is done by line ministries and State governments.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) It no longer existed. The Planning Commission, set up by an executive resolution in 1950 to draw up the Five Year Plans, was abolished and replaced by NITI Aayog with effect from 1 January 2015 — nine months BEFORE the Sustainable Development Goals were even adopted in September 2015. It could not have been the nodal body for a framework that post-dates it.  (b) An advisory body constituted in 1996 to advise the Government on the sale of its equity in public sector undertakings. Its subject is public-enterprise ownership and its work has since been absorbed into the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management. It has no development-policy remit of any kind, let alone an SDG one.  (d) A constitutional body under Article 280, constituted by the President every five years, whose job is to recommend how the net proceeds of Union taxes are shared with the States and what grants-in-aid the States should receive. It shapes how development is FINANCED but has no mandate to implement, coordinate or monitor the Goals. As of this December 2019 exam the Fifteenth Finance Commission, chaired by N. K. Singh, was at work.

Concept: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — 17 Goals and 169 targets — was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals that ran from 2000 to 2015. Unlike the MDGs, the SDGs apply to every country, rich and poor alike, and are universal, indivisible and voluntary-but-reported: countries present Voluntary National Reviews of their progress at the UN High-Level Political Forum. India's domestic architecture for delivering them has four tiers — NITI Aayog coordinates and monitors, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation owns the National Indicator Framework and the data, central ministries and State governments implement through schemes, and Parliament and the State legislatures oversee.

State PCS 2019 Q105 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q105 — Economy PYQ with Answer