In May 2025, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) launched the Panchayat Advancement Index (PAI) 2.0 portal in the presence of Vivek Bharadwaj, Secretary of MoPR, during a two-day National Writeshop on PAI 2.0 for Financial Year 2023-24(FY24), held at Dr.Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi, Delhi.
- Local Indicator Framework (LIF) Booklet for FY24 along with the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was also released during the event.
- The initiatives were launched with an aim to empower Gram Panchayats with data driven tools for evidence-based planning and monitoring.
Key People:
Saurabh Garg, Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI); Sushil Kumar Lohani, Additional Secretary, MoPR and Rajib Kumar Sen, Senior Advisor, NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog were also present.
Key Points:
i.The National Writeshop offers hands-on training, in-depth portal walkthroughs, and knowledge sharing from various States and Union Territories (UTs).
ii.The event hosts over 250 delegates from 32 States and UTs, alongside representatives from government bodies and technical partners like the National Informatics Centre (NIC), National Institution for Transforming India(NITI) Aayog, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Piramal Foundation.
About Panchayat Advancement Index 2.0:
i.PAI is a multidimensional assessment framework, developed by the MoPR to enable performance tracking of over 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats across 9 themes, aligned with the Localization of Sustainable Development Goals (LSDGs).
- The 9 LSDG themes include Poverty-free and Enhanced Livelihoods Panchayat, Healthy Panchayat, Child-Friendly Panchayat, Water-Sufficient Panchayat, Clean and Green Panchayat, Panchayat with Self-Sufficient infrastructure, Socially Just and Socially Secured Panchayat, Panchayat with Good Governance, and Women-Friendly Panchayat.
ii.While PAI version 1.0 served as the baseline and covered data from 2.16 lakh Gram Panchayats across 29 States/Union Territories (UTs), PAI 2.0 represents a major leap towards functionality, efficiency and usability.
iii.The transition from PAI 1.0 to 2.0 reflects a focused refinement of the framework, with a sharper and more practical set of indicators and data points to improve usability and reliability while retaining thematic competitiveness.
iv.PAI 2.0 has reduced the number of indicators from 516 in PAI 1.0 to 147 indicators, focusing on quality and sharper focus on the 9 LSDGs themes.
v.The data points have been reduced from 794 in version 1.0 to 227 in version 2.0, for streamlining efficiency and data clarity.
Note: India’s SDG data availability has risen from 55% to nearly 95% in the last five years.
About the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR):
Union Minister – Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh (Constituency – Munger, Bihar)
Minister of State (MoS) – S P Singh Baghel (Constituency – Agra, Uttar Pradesh, UP)
