The Aspirational District Programme (ADP) was launched in January 2018 with the objective of rapidly transforming the 112 most backward districts across India and bringing them at par with the more developed regions of the country. Assessment of the ADP:

• Overall progress: 95% of 112 aspirational districts (ADs) have made significant progress in major indicators such as health, nutrition, financial inclusion, and skill development.
• Health and nutrition: Many ADs have surpassed the average state values in several indicators under the Health and Nutrition theme monitored under the programme.
  • Significant improvements have been made in institutional deliveries, Severe Acute Malnutrition and service delivery in PHCs.
  • A qualitative change in child nutrition is visible, vaccination among children has reached over 90 per cent.
  • However, all ADP districts lag in reducing the percentage of stunted, underweight children under five years. Also, 93 out of 112 ADs have more than 50 percent of anaemic women.
• Education: Schools demonstrated successful use of technology and innovation to deliver better quality education. However, despite significant improvements across learning outcomes, infrastructure, and institutional indicators, none of the districts were able to meet their targets.
• Agriculture and water resources: About 430 waterbodies in the 10 aspirational districts have been rejuvenated. However, despite a number of initiatives, this sector remains one of the most underperforming sectors of ADP.
• Financial inclusion: ADs have performed better than non-aspirational districts with regard to financial inclusion. This means more people have access to bank accounts, more have been covered under the fold of government insurance schemes and more can secure MUDRA loans in ADs. In aspirational districts, financial inclusion has increased from 30 percent to 90 percent.
• Skill development: Although some districts have performed well, a few others have not been able to meet their targets. At the same time, the absence of market demand for skills, or lack of suitable employment opportunities despite the training is forcing people to migrate to cities resulting in lesser uptake of skill development programmes.
• Basic Infrastructure: Several ADs have reported saturation in the basic infrastructure indicators like the percentage of households with electricity connection, percentage of habitations with access to all-weather roads under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, percentage of households with individual household washrooms, etc.
  • In this regard, 30 ADP districts have less than 50 per cent of houses completed under PMAY- Grameen.

For the ADP to make further positive progress, challenges such as disparities among sectors, disparities among districts, data discrepancies, adverse impact of competition, lack of human resources, inadequate focus on gender and the environment need to be addressed effectively.