Doubling Farmers' Income, 'Modicare' Top NITI Aayog Agenda

New Delhi: Grappling with agrarian crisis and widespread resentment among crop growers, farmer issues are set to dominate the fourth governing council meeting of NITI Aayog on Sunday. Besides looking into ways of doubling of farmers’ income by 2022, PM Modi’s pet scheme ‘Ayushman Bharat’ will also be one of the top agendas of the council.

The meeting of the governing council, comprising of all chief ministers, lieutenant governors of union territories, several union ministers and senior government officials, will be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Ahead of the crucial meeting, the prime minister said that the council will discuss the implementation of key policies relating to various sectors.

“Looking forward to the 4th Governing Council meeting of @NITIAayog tomorrow. Implementation of key policies relating to a wide range of sectors will be discussed during the meeting (sic),” he had tweeted.

“The agenda of the council meeting also includes further expansion of Mission Indradhanush for immunisation of children and mothers. Besides, there will also be discussions on the roadmap to commemorate the 150 birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi in 2019,” said a senior official of the NITI Aayog on condition of anonymity.

Incidentally, a host of agricultural marketing reforms advocated by the NITI Aayog in the recent past have met with cold responses from a number of states.

Besides, development agenda for ‘New India 2022’ is expected to be approved in the meeting.

At the Council's first meeting on 8 February, 2015, PM Modi had laid down the key mandates of NITI Aayog such as fostering cooperative federalism by addressing national issues through mutual cooperation and monitoring of important schemes and programmes.

It was also decided that the Aayog will act as the “think tank” of the government and work as a bridge between the centre and the states.

Later, sub-groups of chief ministers and two task forces, one on elimination of Poverty in India and other on Agriculture Development were set up.

The second meeting of council on 15 July, 2015 reviewed the progress made by the three sub-groups of chief ministers and the two task forces.

In the third meeting of council on 23 April, 2017, Modi had pitched for conducting simultaneous elections of the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies and shifting to a January-December fiscal year.