Uplift poor to accelerate economic growth: Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant

NEW DELHI: India needs to accelerate its economic growth, and in order to materialise it, the country must lift vast number of people out of poverty, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said today.

"We are growing at over 7 per cent. We need to accelerate growth...The real challenge is that you cannot accelerate growth rate if vast number of people are living below poverty line," he said at an event here.

The CEO also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is more focused on outcome-based monitoring of government schemes.

Underlining the importance of technology, Kant said the government's thrust is on Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) but it is not achievable without technology.

The quality of education in the country has also fallen, he said pointing out that 42 per cent of class five students are incapable of doing addition and subtraction.

"The quality of education has radically fallen...it is not possible to improve teachers' attendance in government schools physically, it is only possible to do it with technology," Kant said.