Parameswaran Iyer appointed new NITI Aayog CEO
Premium- The appointments committee of the cabinet also said in its order that Iyer’s appointment is for a term of two years on the same terms as of Kant.
NEW DELHI : The government on Friday appointed Parameswaran Iyer, a former officer of the Indian administrative Service, as the new chief executive officer (CEO) of federal policy think tank NITI Aayog. Iyer succeeds Amitabh Kant, whose tenure ends on 30 June.
The appointments committee of the cabinet also said in its order that Iyer’s appointment is for a term of two years on the same terms as of Kant.
Iyer, a former secretary to the Central government, is an expert on water and sanitation and is the programme manager of 2030 Water Resources Group, a public, private, civil society partnership hosted by the World Bank Group. He brings together administrative experience as well as deep knowledge in climate change and the water crisis faced by many parts of the world.
India too is facing an acute water crisis, prompting Prime Minister Modi, who chairs NITI Aayog, to launch a scheme, Atal Jal Yojana, in 2019 for the benefit of eight worst affected states including Maharashtra, Haryana, Karnataka and Rajasthan, where the situation is very worrisome. NITI Aayog had earlier flagged that about 600 million people faced high to extreme water stress and about 200,000 people die every year because of inadequate access to safe water.
Amitabh Kant, has been the key driver of several government initiatives such as ‘make in India’, ‘startup India’ and ‘incredible India’ and in NITI Aayog, he has been driving initiatives to develop the most backward districts in the country, improving ease of doing business and efforts to measure and track various development indices. He has also been instrumental in designing incentive schemes for boosting manufacturing activities and in the initiatives in electric mobility and climate change impact mitigation.
Amitabh Kant said that after taking a short break, he intends to pursue his areas of interest including start-ups and green hydrogen. Kant described some of the policies drawn up by NITI Aayog like production linked incentives in 14 sectors as transformative and said he was grateful to government for the opportunity to drive initiatives such as aspirational districts and circular economy.
Kant had also extensively engaged with civil society organisations as chairperson of a task force set up for covid management. Kant, who has extensive administrative experience, had previously been given tenure extensions in 2019 and in 2021.
With the new CEO, the federal policy think tank now has a change of guard as Suman K Bery took over as vice chairman in May. The changes come ahead of a meeting of NITI Aayog’s governing Council chaired by Modi and comprising state chief ministers.