With the third term of the Modi government looking for significant policy breakthroughs ahead of the 2029 general elections, expectations are unusually high. But Jain’s challenge will go beyond generating new ideas - he will also have to restore the institution’s lost energy, relevance, and influence.

Comparisons with Amitabh Kant, its longest-serving CEO, from 2016-2022, are already doing the rounds. 

NITI Aayog was perhaps at its most consequential phase under him. Kant transformed the organisation into a dynamic forum for policy thinking, stakeholder engagement, and innovation, many in bureaucratic circles believe.

Living Up To Kant Era

Kant is widely regarded as having set an exceptionally high benchmark for the CEO’s office. 

“Initiatives such as the Aspirational Districts Programme, Atal Innovation Mission, and SDG India Index gave the institution a distinctive policy footprint. Its work on electric mobility, artificial intelligence, digital payments and asset monetisation further established NITI Aayog as a convening platform capable of bringing policymakers, experts, and industry together around issues of national importance,” an old hand in NITI Aayog said.

His stint as Secretary of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) gave him a strong understanding of the machinery of economic policymaking and helped him position NITI Aayog as an influential policy engine, say many serving bureaucrats.

Jain, a 1989-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, arrives at NITI Aayog with a strikingly similar credential. 

His experience as DPIIT Secretary, along with his exposure to the Prime Minister’s Office ecosystem, gives him both policy depth and an understanding of how government priorities are translated into action. 

Jain is an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus with a B.Tech (Honours) in Electrical Engineering. He has been serving as Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh since October 2024, and his tenure there ends on 31 August, following which he will hold the reins of NITI Aayog. 

Before that, Jain served as Secretary in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways for nearly 18 months, from April 2023. 

Slow Momentum

NITI Aayog was founded in 2015. Sindhushree Khullar was its first CEO, followed by Kant, Parameswaran Iyer, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, with Nidhi Chhibber holding interim charge before Jain’s name was announced for the post.

There has been a general view among officers in NITI Aayog that the momentum appears to have weakened since Kant demitted office as CEO.

“Parameswaran Iyer’s tenure lasted barely seven months before Subrahmanyam took over. While both brought considerable administrative experience, the institution increasingly came to be viewed as more bureaucratic and less animated by the culture of ideas and experimentation that had characterised the Kant era,” another senior officer said.

Two-Fold Task

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved Jain’s appointment for a two-year term.

It is widely seen as a strategic choice by the Narendra Modi government, given his long association with key infrastructure and investment portfolios at the Centre. Over the years, he has handled some of the government's most critical assignments, particularly in sectors that have remained central to the Prime Minister's economic priorities.

For Jain, the immediate task is two-fold: make NITI Aayog consequential again and ensure that its ideas translate into measurable policy outcomes.

India’s economic transformation, employment challenge, urbanisation, manufacturing ambitions, energy transition, and technological disruption demand precisely the kind of cross-sector thinking the institution was created to provide.

The political timing is also hard to miss. 

With the Modi government seeking a fresh set of transformative initiatives to define its third term and build a credible policy narrative before 2029, NITI Aayog cannot afford to remain merely another government office.

Jain’s success will ultimately be judged not by the number of reports produced but by whether he can restore NITI Aayog as a place where ambitious ideas are debated, tested, and converted into national policy. 

The benchmark, inevitably, remains the Kant era.