A 22-member student delegation from Arunachal Pradesh University, Pasighat, created history on Friday by becoming the first student group in the country to be granted an official study visit to NITI Aayog, India’s premier policy think tank, as part of their educational tour to the national capital.
The delegation, accompanied by faculty escort Ngurang Mana and staff member Jumkar Nada, took part in an interactive session at the NITI Aayog headquarters chaired by Dr Joram Aniya, Member, NITI Aayog, alongside Maj Gen K Narayanan (AVSM), who welcomed the students.
Lt Col Jitendra Verma, OSD, NITI Aayog, moderated the proceedings and gave an institutional overview of the organisation’s work.
Delivering the concluding address, Dr Aniya urged the students to see themselves as partners in implementing government welfare schemes once they returned home.
She said NITI Aayog’s constant endeavour was to make the life of every citizen better, and that while policymakers worked round the clock to design these schemes, taking them to the grassroots required the cooperation of citizens themselves.
She reminded the students that the schemes now running across Arunachal Pradesh had not come about overnight but were the result of considerable sacrifice, and that the task of ensuring they reached villages, mothers and sisters on the ground now rested with the people, including the students themselves.
Following the briefing, the delegation was taken to the state-of-the-art Viksit Bharat Strategy Room, where students explored live digital governance portals and were given a detailed overview of the “Lighthouse Model,” a framework used to identify and scale up successful governance innovations across states.
The visit concluded with an exchange of mementoes between the students and the dignitaries present, marking what university officials described as a landmark moment for Arunachal Pradesh University and for higher education in the state.
