From Planning to Power: Why NITI Aayog Needs More Than Just Ideas

Ten years ago, the Indian government scrapped the Planning Commission—a relic of Nehruvian central planning—and launched NITI Aayog in its place, promising a new era of cooperative federalism, nimble policymaking, and real-time analytics. The hope was that a lean think tank would replace a bloated command centre; that dashboards would do what diktats once did.

Now, with two full terms of BJP governance behind us and a third underway, it’s time to ask the obvious question: Did we trade up?

Short answer: yes—but only part of the way.

A Think Tank With a Broad Mandate—But Limited Teeth

By design, NITI Aayog is tasked with fostering cooperative federalism, developing long-term policy visions, facilitating best-practice sharing among states, and catalysing innovation. It is meant to be the government’s primary policy think tank—less a fund-allocator and more a strategic brain. Its mandate includes evaluating schemes, recommending structural reforms, and helping shape national priorities in sync with global trends. However, it is not a statutory body. It reports to the Prime Minister, who serves as its Chairperson, with the Vice Chairperson and CEO appointed by the central government. While this structure allows flexibility, it also means NITI has no formal authority over ministries or state governments, nor any binding enforcement powers. It can advise and convene, but it cannot compel. And that’s where the problem lies: ideas without levers rarely move systems.

From Soviet Blueprint to Google Sheet

The Planning Commission ran India like a spreadsheet with a god complex. It set targets, allocated funds, and demanded obedience from states. That worked in a low-growth, centrally planned economy. But by the early 2000s, it was clear the model had run its course. India had changed. Its economy was more open, more federal, and faster-moving than the Five-Year Plan mindset could grasp.

NITI Aayog arrived as a slimmer, smarter alternative. No longer a fund disburser, it became a policy catalyst—producing indices, convening states, seeding innovation labs, and advising ministries. It was staffed not by lifetime babus but by young economists, technologists, and lateral hires. A dashboard nation needed a dashboard brain.

And to be fair, NITI has delivered some quiet successes. The Aspirational Districts Programme has nudged real improvements in health, nutrition, and learning outcomes in some of the country’s poorest pockets. Its Atal Innovation Mission has created a nationwide network of tinkering labs. Its SDG Index is now a fixture in state planning departments. And its policy papers—from gig economy protections to post-COVID resilience—are thoughtful, readable, and often timely.

But these wins live in the world of influence, not enforcement. And in today’s India, that’s no longer enough.

Where the Grain Still Rots

Consider, for example, India’s long-standing plan to modernise foodgrain storage—a project so basic, it shouldn’t even need a headline. Back in 2016, the Food Ministry and FCI announced a mission to build 10 million tonnes of steel silos to replace tarpaulin-covered plinths that lose lakhs of tonnes of grain each year to rot and rodents.

Nearly a decade later, fewer than 3 million tonnes of silo capacity has been built. Worse, not one industrial-scale rice silo exists in the southern states, where paddy is the staple. A single pilot in Buxar, Bihar—1,700 km from Chennai’s ports—is all we have to show. Meanwhile, post-harvest losses continue to hover between 4–6%, enough to feed 30 million people.

Why the delay? Land acquisition tangles, rail siding bottlenecks, overcomplicated PPP models, and sheer inertia. The private sector cherry-picks north Indian wheat corridors with faster turnaround; the rest of the map is left behind. And through all this, NITI Aayog remains a bystander—helpful with policy papers, perhaps, but without the mandate or muscle to fix anything.

In China, the same problem would have landed on the desk of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which would have summoned the railways, logistics firms, provincial leaders and financiers into one room—and told them to solve it. The NDRC delivered 65 million tonnes of modern storage between 2021 and 2025. India still hasn’t cracked even 30% of its target announced in 2016.

This is the real issue: not the quality of ideas—but the absence of authority to implement them.

A Think Tank Is Not a Cockpit

NITI Aayog was never meant to be the new Planning Commission. But that’s no excuse for its helplessness on issues that cut across ministries. When it works, it works well—helping align Jal Jeevan, Gati Shakti, or health infrastructure. But these successes often rely on the Prime Minister’s personal push, not institutional heft.

For all its dynamism, NITI remains tethered to the limitations of an advisory body. It cannot call shots on budget allocations. It cannot compel ministries to act. It cannot pull rank on state governments. Even its most strategic insights—on AI, climate, fintech, or food security—float in a policy ether unless someone with budgetary power grabs them and runs.

So while India got rid of the Planning Commission’s bloat, it never built a delivery engine in its place.

So, Did We Trade Up?

In many ways, yes. NITI is faster, smarter, more outward-looking, and less bureaucratic. It’s open to external experts. It publishes useful data. It nudges rather than dictates. These are all good things in a country as diverse and complex as India.

But we also lost something: the ability to hold the system accountable for national priorities. The Planning Commission may have been rigid, but when it said a road or power plant would be built, the money followed. Today, we have far more ambition—and far less follow-through.

To put it plainly: we moved from a lumbering elephant to a nimble gazelle. But in a world full of predators, a gazelle without teeth can’t lead the herd.

What’s the Fix?

India doesn’t need to revive the Planning Commission. But it does need to upgrade NITI Aayog into something more muscular, mission-focused, and outcome-driven. Specifically:

• Give it a statutory charter—like the Finance Commission or Election Commission—so it’s not dissolved or diluted with every political season.
• Empower it to act as a national coordinator on high-stakes cross-ministry missions: storage, AI infrastructure, green energy, semiconductors, digital public goods.
• Create a war-room model—like the COVID taskforce—with weekly execution tracking and Cabinet escalation on priority bottlenecks.
• Allocate real money—not to build roads, but to hire talent, commission external evaluations, and run pilots at scale.

Why This Can’t Wait

The global headwinds are intensifying—and they’re not economic alone.

Technology is changing everything—from AI and quantum computing to robotics, 5G, and EVs.

Conflicts are redrawing power equations—Russia, China, and Israel are reshaping alliances.

Policy is now weaponised—from U.S. tariffs to Chinese trade blackmail, nations are using regulation as a tool of coercion.

India, in this churn, cannot afford to be merely reactive. We need foresight, direction, and execution—not just analysis. The age of merely “thinking” is over. The next decade must belong to institutions that deliver.

Because in the end, file notes don’t hold grain. Silos do.

And dashboards don’t change destiny—unless someone powers the engine behind the screen.