india

Updated: Jun 11, 2019 00:54 IST

Maintaining that poverty alleviation and water sector are the core focus areas of his government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday asked India’s top bureaucrats to prepare a roadmap in order make the country a $5 trillion economy with “ease of living” by 2022, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said.

In an extensive interaction with secretaries of various union ministries and departments on Monday evening, Modi asked them to encourage people’s participation in key policy planning. “We should take expectations of people as opportunity for us to work even harder. Expectations show that people are eager and also have the urge to transform the nation,” said one of officials quoting the PM.

Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman and Dr. Jitendra Singh, were present at PM Modi’s meeting with Secretaries of Government of India. ( ANI Photo )

Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman and Jitendra Singh were also present on the occasion, an official statement said.

During the interaction, cabinet secretary PK Sinha highlighted two important tasks, which would be placed before sectoral groups of secretaries -- a five-year plan document for each ministry, with well-defined targets and milestones; and a significant impactful decision in each ministry, for which approvals will be taken within 100 days, the statement said.

Modi congratulated the bureaucrats for their stupendous governance efforts that were reflected in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, which was a vote for “pro-incumbency”, which indicated that the people were happy with the work of the government, the officials said. For that, a large part of the credit goes to the officials who have delivered on the various governance targets during the last five years, the PM was quoted as saying.

He urged them to increase the use of technology in governance, which would enhance effectiveness, efficiency and reduce corruption and asked them to give importance to the “aspirational districts” across the nation.

In January last year, Modi had launched the “aspirational district programme” to transform the districts that have shown relatively less progress in key development sectors.

The secretaries made several suggestions to achieve Modi’s vision for a New India by 2022, when the country will celebrate 75 years of Independence. They also spoke about deliverables in the coming 100 days, the officials said. This was PM’s first meeting with top bureaucrats after he assumed office for the second term last month.

In his previous stint, he had been directly interacting with secretaries, who are the key bureaucrats that help the government in framing policies and implementing them.

Speaking at the meeting on Monday, cabinet secretary PK Sinha said that PM had been interacting directly with all officers up to director and deputy secretary levels in the previous tenure of the Government.

The interactions were mainly focused on officers’ ideas and experiences on various governance issues such as digital and smart governance, administrative procedures and accountability, transparency, doubling of farmers’ income, skill development, consumer rights and environment protection.