Niti Aayog Vice Chairman and Four Long Time Serving Members
Shown the Door as New Team of Five Retired Officials, Scientists and Economists
Take Over
·
Key development:
o
Government undertakes first major overhaul
of NITI Aayog since 2015
·
New Vice-Chairperson:
o
Ashok Lahiri appointed
o
Replaces Suman Berry
·
New Full-Time Members (4 appointed):
o
Abhay Karandikar (DST Secretary, 5G expert)
o
M Srinivas (medical expert)
o
Gobardhan Das (IISER Bhopal Director)
o
K V Raju (agriculture economist)
·
Continuing member:
o
Rajiv Gauba retained as full-time member
·
Members replaced:
o
V K Saraswat
o
V K Paul
o
Ramesh Chand
o
Arvind Virmani
·
Institutional profile remains similar:
o
Leadership mix continues with economists,
scientists, and bureaucrats
·
Notable expertise of new members:
o
Karandikar: 5G and telecom innovation,
“frugal 5G” for rural India
o
Das: Immunology & tuberculosis research
o
Raju: Agricultural economics & policy
advisory
o
Srinivas: Healthcare administration &
clinical expertise
·
Overall significance:
o
Signals policy reset and fresh leadership at
India’s top think tank
o
Brings diverse domain expertise to guide
economic, tech, and social policy
o
Aims to strengthen evidence-based policymaking
and reforms
In
the first major revamp of the NITI Aayog since its inception in 2015, the
government has appointed a new vice-chairman and replaced four of the five
full-time members of the premier policy think tank.
Eminent
economist Ashok Lahiri has been appointed as the new vice-chairperson of the
Aayog. He will replace Suman Berry, who has been serving in the post since
April 2022.
Abhay
Karandikar, Secretary in Department of Science and Technology and AIIMS Delhi
director Dr M Srinivas are among the four new full-time Members who have been
appointed, a government notification dated April 24 said.
Director
of IISER Bhopal Gobardhan Das and K V Raju, member of the Economic Advisory
Council to the Prime Minister, are the other two new inductees as full-time
Members.
They
will replace long-serving full time Members V K Saraswat, V K Paul, Ramesh
Chand and Arvind Virmani. Saraswat, a former director general of Defence
Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), was the first full-time Member of
the NITI Aayog, having been appointed in January 2015. For quite some time, he
was the only full-time member of the Aayog, before being joined by Ramesh
Chand, an agriculture scientist, and V K Paul, an eminent pediatrician,
in June 2019. Virmani, a former chief economic advisor to the government, was
appointed in 2022.
Former
Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, who was appointed to the Aayog last year, is the
only full-time Member to have been retained in this revamp, and reappointed.
The
reconstituted NITI Aayog looks very same to the existing one in terms of the
expertise of its top functionaries — an economist as the vice-chairperson, and
two scientists, two economists and one bureaucrat among its full-time Members.
Karandikar,
a former director of IIT Kanpur, is known for his work on wired and wireless
network technologies. He has been one of the brains behind the introduction of
5G technology in the country. His team has worked on developing an architecture
that can help provide “frugal 5G” connecting rural India to the network.
Karandikar spearheaded the efforts that led to the setting up of
Telecommunication Standards Development Society (TSDSI), of which he was the
founding chairman.
Das,
a molecular biologist and immunologist, is currently serving as director of
IISER Bhopal. He is known for his work on tuberculosis, with his research
focusing on the strengthening of the immune system against this pathogen.
Raju,
like Ramesh Chand, is an agriculture economist who is currently an advisor to
the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. In the past, he has served as economic
advisor to the chief minister of Karnataka as well. Ramesh has previously
worked with International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics in
Hyderabad and International Water Management Institute in Colombo.
Srinivas,
a pedicatrician like V K Paul, has been serving as
director of AIIMS Delhi since 2022.