New Delhi, Mar 29 (KNN) The NITI Aayog has selected 115 aspirational districts for baseline ranking on the basis of 49 indicators across 5 sectors that include health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion, skill development and basic infrastructure.

On March 28, NITI Aayog launched the baseline ranking for these 115 aspirational districts, which would be followed by the delta ranking from May 2018 on the basis of “incremental Progress”.

As per the information released by the NITI Aayog, the dashboard created for real time data collection and monitoring will be open for public viewing from April 1.

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said that this dashboard will help district collectors of all the selected aspirational districts to feed the latest available data of their respective districts.

This dashboard has been created by the NITI Aayog in conjunction with the government of Andhra Pradesh for monitoring the real time progress of the districts.

With a view to make the district representatives aware and familiarize with the dashboard and its functioning, the Aayog had organized a training workshop for them on March 23.

Thus Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ program in January to quickly and effectively transform some of the most underdeveloped districts of the country. 

The broad outline of the program include convergence (of central and state schemes), collaboration (of central, state level ‘Prabhari’ officers & district collectors), and competition among districts. 

This program will focus on the key strengths on each district and identify low-hanging fruits for immediate improvement.

Further with states as the main drivers, it will focus on its measure progress and rank districts accordingly.

The program aim is to make the selected districts a best district within their state and country both.

Thus they have been encouraged to first catch-up with the best district within their state, and subsequently aspire to become one of the best in the country, by competing with, and learning from others. (KNN/YV)