A 22-member student delegation from the Arunachal Pradesh University (APU) in East Siang district visited the NITI Aayog in New Delhi on Friday as part of a study visit. This marks the first time a student group in the country has been granted an official study visit to the NITI Aayog, India’s premier policy think tank.
The delegation, accompanied by faculty escort Ngurang Mana and staff member Jumkar Nada, participated in an interactive session at the NITI Aayog headquarters. The session was chaired by NITI Aayog member Dr Joram Aniya, alongside Maj Gen K Narayanan, who welcomed the students. NITI Aayog OSD Lt Col Jitendra Verma moderated the proceedings and provided an institutional overview of the organisation’s work.
Dr Aniya encouraged the students to view themselves as partners in implementing government welfare schemes once they return home. She emphasized that the NITI Aayog’s primary goal is to improve the lives of every citizen, and while policymakers work tirelessly to design these schemes, taking them to the grassroots requires the cooperation of citizens themselves.
Dr Aniya also reminded the students that the schemes currently running across Arunachal have not come about overnight but are the result of considerable sacrifice. She stressed that the task of ensuring these schemes reach villages now rests with the people, including the students themselves.
During their visit, the delegation was also taken to the state-of-the-art Viksit Bharat strategy room, where they explored live digital governance portals and received a detailed overview of the ‘lighthouse model’, a framework used to identify and scale up successful governance innovations across states.
