PM sends ministers, officials to visit ‘aspirational districts’
MINISTERS HAVE BEEN ASKED TO SPEND A DAY OR TWO IN SOME OF THE ‘ASPIRATIONAL DISTRICTS’
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked Union ministers and senior bureaucrats to visit “aspirational districts” and border areas over the next few weeks to collect feedback on how well government policies are working on the ground, according to people aware of the matter.
In separate communications sent earlier this month, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief JP Nadda wrote to BJP chief ministers and home secretary Ajay Bhalla to bureaucrats, putting in place a mechanism to collect information. While ministers have been asked to spend a day or two in some of India’s 118 “aspirational districts”, bureaucrats of deputy secretary and higher rank have been asked to travel to border areas and give an “on-the-ground assessment’’ of government schemes to their respective ministries.
The idea to send bureaucrats to remote corners of the country was first floated by the Prime Minister in a meeting with secretaries on
April 2, the people cited above said. “Honourable PM emphasised the necessity of concerted and coordinated action by all ministries for comprehensive development of border villages,’’ Bhalla wrote in his April 7 letter. “PM also directed about deputing senior officers from the ministry/ department concerned for at least one night stay in the border villages.”
The aim, Bhalla wrote, was for the officers to give a “practical prescription for all-round development’’. This will then be incorporated into their policymaking and legislation by the said ministry, he added. HT has seen a copy of the letter. Within days of the PM proposing these field trips for bureaucrats, the people said each ministry began drawing up specific to-do lists and assigning nodal officers. According to the home secretary’s instructions, they will give monthly reports on social and economic parameters from villages in Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Mizoram.
As part of the same plan, by the end of the month, senior ministers are expected to travel to “aspirational districts” – which were identified by Niti Aayog in 2018 with an objective to improve India’s human development index ranking – for ground surveys.
While external affairs minister S Jaishankar is expected to travel to Visakhapatnam, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to visit Ranchi, commerce minister Piyush Goyal to go to Haridwar, and women and child development minister Smriti Irani is likely to go to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s constitutency of Wayanad, one of the people said.
“Nadda ji has sent a letter to all state presidents telling them to help organise the ministers’ visits,’’ said a BJP functionary on condition of anonymity.