UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 105 of 150

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.

• (a)Planning Commission — 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)Disinvestment Commission — 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)Finance Commission — 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.

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.

This is a one-step elimination question if the institutional map is clear. The Planning Commission is defunct, so it is out on a date check alone. The Disinvestment Commission is about selling public-sector equity, an entirely different subject. The Finance Commission is a constitutional body with a fiscal-transfer mandate fixed by Article 280 — real power over how development is paid for, none over what gets delivered. That leaves the one live, cross-sectoral, whole-of-government policy body: NITI Aayog. The recurring examiner's hook is the Planning Commission, because candidates who learnt 'planning body' as a phrase reach for it by habit; anchoring 1 January 2015 as the changeover date kills that instinct permanently.

• The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets were adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 as the 2030 Agenda, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015).
• NITI Aayog was created by a Cabinet resolution with effect from 1 January 2015, replacing the Planning Commission (1950), and is the Government of India's nodal body for coordinating and monitoring the SDGs.
• NITI Aayog maps the Goals and targets to ministries and schemes and publishes the SDG India Index — first edition December 2018; the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation maintains the National Indicator Framework.
• India's first Voluntary National Review on the SDGs was presented at the UN High-Level Political Forum in 2017, led by NITI Aayog.
• NITI Aayog is neither a constitutional nor a statutory body — it was set up by an executive resolution. The Prime Minister is its Chairperson; it also has a Vice-Chairperson, a Chief Executive Officer, and a Governing Council comprising all Chief Ministers and Lieutenant Governors.

• Answering 'Planning Commission' out of habit — it was abolished on 1 January 2015, before the SDGs were adopted.
• Conflating NITI Aayog's coordinating and monitoring role with implementation, which line ministries and State governments carry out, and with statistics, which MoSPI owns through the National Indicator Framework.
• Treating NITI Aayog as a constitutional or statutory body. It is neither — it rests on an executive resolution, exactly as the Planning Commission did.

UPSC has asked outright what NITI Aayog replaced (2015) and which planning bodies find no mention in the Constitution (2013). UPPSC returns instead to NITI Aayog's SDG products — the band Uttar Pradesh occupied in the SDG India Index (2020) and which State was NOT among the top five in the 2020-21 index (2021) — so learn the institution together with its publications.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, consists of

  • (a)8 Goals and 21 targets
  • (b)17 Goals and 169 targets
  • (c)15 Goals and 100 targets
  • (d)20 Goals and 150 targets

  Answer(b) 17 Goals and 169 targets — option (a) describes the Millennium Development Goals, the 2000-2015 framework that the SDGs replaced.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In India, which one of the following maintains the National Indicator Framework used to monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goals?

  • (a)NITI Aayog
  • (b)Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
  • (c)Ministry of Finance
  • (d)Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India

  Answer(b) Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation — MoSPI owns the National Indicator Framework and the statistical machinery behind it, while NITI Aayog is the nodal body for coordinating and monitoring the Goals themselves.