Multidimensional cheerleaders.

 "24.82 crore (248.2 million) people escaped multidimensional poverty in last nine years. Findings of NITI Aayog's Discussion Paper 'Multidimensional Poverty in India since 2005-06' give credit for this remarkable achievement to significant initiatives of the government to address all dimensions of poverty between 2013-14 to 2022-23." pib.gov.in. Mr Modi grabbed power in the 2014 general election (wikipedia), so whether the paper passes the smell test (dictionary) is debatable. NITI Aayog uses 12 indicators like 'health, schooling, sanitation and even bank accounts," wrote Ajit Ranade. Welfare spending and direct benefit transfers can be counted as income for the recipients but "current research is blindfolded by the absence of household consumption data". In fact, "Private final consumer expenditure (PFCE) growth is estimated tumbling to 4.4% this year from 7.5% in FY23," and even this has been at the cost of a "steep drawdown of household financial savings - to 5.1% of GDP in FY23, from 7.2%, in FY22 - and a rapid increase in financial liabilities to 5.8% of GDP in FY23 from 3.8% the year before." FE. NITI Aayog seems to have completely ignored the effects of Covid. In 2020, "On March 25, when India had reported only 500 cases, the country went into one of the strictest lockdowns." HT. This was extended 4 times with gradual relaxations each time. wikipedia. In 2021, at least 4.7 million people died of Covid according to the WHO (ET) but the number could be far higher. "Two years of covid-19 pandemic led to widespread job losses and a fall in incomes for millions of workers. 2022-23 was the first full year of recovery after covid-19." "The All-India per capita income for 2022-23 was Rs 1.15 lakh per year. In real terms (adjusted for higher prices of goods and services), that is 6.7% higher than in 2019-20, the last pre-covid year." Mint. "Unemployment in 2022-23 are higher than they were a decade ago for all states, except Delhi and West Bengal." "Regular workers in urban areas earned 38% more than such workers in rural areas in 2017-18. This gap is now 45%." This is because, "Of the estimated growth of 105 million in rural workers since 2017-18, 40 million has come from unpaid work and 43 million from own account self-employed workers," wrote Abhishek Jha. The state of education is dire. "Nearly 43% of children in the 14-18 age group cannot read sentences in English, while among their rural counterparts, 25% struggle to read a Class 2 level text in their respective regional language, shows the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2023." TOI. NITI Aayog is a public sector body (wikipedia), paid for by the taxpayer. It should not be acting as cheerleaders (google) for the government. A little dignity and self-respect would make it credible. Maybe that's why they were picked.