PRAGATI Meeting

• 26 Nov 2020

Why in News

Recently, the Prime Minister (PM) has chaired the 33^rd PRAGATI meeting.

• Interaction through PRAGATI is held once every month on Fourth Wednesday, known as PRAGATI Day.

Key Points

• Highlights of the Meeting:
  
  • The PM asked states to develop a state-specific export strategy, and reviewed development projects worth Rs. 1.41 lakh crore spread across 10 states and union territories.
  • Grievances related to Covid-19 and to the PM Awas Yojana (Gramin) were also taken up.
  • PM SVANidhi, agriculture reforms and development of districts as export hubs were reviewed.
• PRAGATI:
  
  • Launched in 2015, PRAGATI is the multimodal platform for Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation involving central and state governments.
    
    • It has been designed by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) team with the help of the National Informatics Center (NIC).
  • It enables the PM to discuss the issues with the concerned central and state officials with full information and latest visuals of the ground-level situation.
  • It is a three-tier system (PMO, Union Government Secretaries, and Chief Secretaries of the States).
  • Objective:
    
    • Grievance Redressal
    • Programme Implementation
    • Project Monitoring
  • The PRAGATI platform uniquely bundles three latest technologies: Digital data management, video-conferencing and geo-spatial technology.
  • Significance:
    
    • It promotes cooperative federalism as it brings together the Secretaries of Government of India and the Chief Secretaries of the States.
    • It is a robust system for bringing e-transparency and e-accountability with real-time presence and exchange among the key stakeholders.
    • It is an innovative project in e-governance and good governance.
  • Concerns: The direct interaction of the PM with the state secretaries without involving the political executives of the states is undermining the state political executive.
    
    • It is also said that this is leading to a concentration of power in the extra-constitutional office of PMO.

Source: IE