After NEP, Siddaramaiah govt set to junk NITI Aayog indices

Bengaluru: After having decided to scrap the National Education Policy (NEP) in Karnataka, the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government is set to junk one more import of the previous BJP regime: the NITI Aayog indicators to measure backwardness. 

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has announced that a new high-power committee will be formed to study regional imbalances in terms of development.

The new committee will succeed the one headed by economist D M Nanjundappa, whose 2002 report formed the basis of enormous government spending to fight regional backwardness. 

According to sources in the chief minister’s office (CMO), the new committee will be asked to “assess the impact of development measures since the Nanjundappa report and evolve new criteria for regional under-development.” The new criteria will effectively replace the NITI Aayog indicators that was adopted by the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government. 

In its 2002 report, the Nanjundappa committee had used 35 indicators covering agriculture, industry, trade & finance, economic & social infrastructure and population to identify 114 out of 175 taluks as backward. This included most backward (39), more backward (40) and backward (35) taluks.

The Nanjundappa Committee had recommended a Special Development Plan (SDP) with a total investment of Rs 31,000 crore over an 8-year period. The SDP was launched in 2007 and slated to be completed in 2014-15. However, it was extended. Between 2007 and 2023, the government has spent Rs 32,433 crore against an allocation of Rs 46,453 crore.

In 2022, the BJP government decided to replace the Nanjundappa Committee’s indicators with ones developed by the NITI Aayog for an ‘aspirational taluks’ programme. The NITI Aayog has identified 49 development parameters in five broad categories: health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skill development and basic infrastructure.

For this, Bommai had earmarked Rs 3,000 crore to improve education in 93 taluks, healthcare in 100 taluks and fight malnutrition in 102 taluks. Siddaramaiah also kept Rs 3,000 crore for ‘aspirational taluks’ in his 2023-24 budget. 

After coming to power, the Congress decided to rollback NEP in Karnataka. It also decided to withdraw laws regulating religious conversion and liberalising agricultural trading,introduced by the previous BJP government.