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NITI Aayog has arisen as the principal advisory body post 2014 replacing the Planning Commission, promoting cooperative and competitive federalism.

Promoting Competitive Federalism:

Leverage of reports/indices to track relative performance, ex: Liveth Bharat Index.

Incentivise states to perform better in crucial sectors, ex: school ranking in terms of learning outcomes – PGI 2.0

Gamifying social responsibility, ex: Increased public participation.

Promoting Competitive Federalism:

Follows a bottom-up instead of top down approach, ex: Advisory consensus role unlike the Planning Commission.

Participation of states unlike earlier, ex: CME are invited to the Governing Body

Consensus-based decisions ensure better implementation, ex: PMU under Invest India (for better investment)

Expert Advice ensures evidence-based persuasion, ex: Unlike command models of Running Commission

However, it suffers from a few parallels:

Purely advisory nature of recommendations, ex: Armchair theorizing w/o ground impact.

Conflicts between states stymie progress, ex: No consensus on key issues

Regional diversity needs customized solutions, ex: Potential of no-uniformity pair India.

Political quandaries and lack of enough capacity, ex: No more lateral entry.

Thus, NITI Aayog needs to be bolstered further to realise the ideal of federalism by resolving these issues and lead to, 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Utkkas'.

— Amrit Mahapatra · AIR 121