ANDHRA PRADESH APPRECIATED FOR IMPLEMENTING SOME BEST PRACTICES

The state of Andhra Pradesh has won accolades from the NITI Aayog for implementing some of the best practices in governance. In its report ‘State Forward – Best Practices from our States’ release two days ago, the NITI Aayog listed Aadhar-enabled Fertiliser Distribution System, Aadhar-enabled Public Distribution System, Swachh Vidyalaya, Policy Intervention for Fisheries in AP, the CM Office Real-time Executive Dashboard as some of the best practices adopted by AP that could be replicated by other states. The Land Pooling Scheme for development of the state’s new capital Amaravati and Digitalisation of Transport Department have also been listed.

“For the country to achieve over nine per cent sustainable growth rates, most states need to grow at 12-13 per cent. And, one of the enabling factors to this would be the replicability of innovative approaches and best project strategies amongst states,” the Aayog noted. A team of over 60 people, comprising senior officials, advisers, Officers on Special Duty, research officers and young professionals identified and vetted the case studies with the “most compelling prospects” in other states. The AePDS is the brainchild of Krishna district Collector Babu Ahamed, who initiated it on an experimental basis when he was Joint Collector of East Godavari district four years ago.
It is now being implemented on a full scale in Krishna district. Following the success in Krishna, the government has now extended it to all 13 districts of the state. In a period of 13 months from May 2015 to June 2016, a subsidy amount of Rs 69.78 crore was saved in Krishna alone with the implementation of AePDS.

“Portability has also been enabled in AePDS, which allows cardholders to draw commodity from any of the FPS as per his convenience,” the Aayog report said. Referring to the CORE Dashboard, the Aayog said it provided a bird’s-eye view of the state’s situation — the performance of different schemes as well as that of government departments to both the state leadership and the public.

“It has, therefore, improved awareness and accountability. It has also enabled faster and smarter decision-making. Such dashboards should be developed by other states as well to monitor their performance. A similar dashboard was launched in Haryana in 2015,” it said.