The NITI Aayog (lit. 'Policy Commission'; abbreviation for National Institution for Transforming India) serves as the apex public policy think tank of the Government of the Republic of India, and the nodal agency tasked with catalyzing economic development, and fostering cooperative federalism and moving away from bargaining federalism through the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach.

It was established in 2015, by the NDA government, to replace the Planning Commission which followed a top-down model. The NITI Aayog council comprises all the state Chief Ministers, along with the Chief Ministers of Delhi and Puducherry, Lieutenant Governors of all Union Territories, and a vice-chairman nominated by the Prime Minister. In addition, temporary members are selected from leading universities and research institutions. These members include a chief executive officer, four ex-officio members, and three part-time members.

On 29-May-2014, the Independent Evaluation Office submitted an assessment report to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the recommendation to replace the Planning Commission with a "control commission." On 13-August-2014, the Union Cabinet scrapped the Planning Commission, to be replaced with a diluted version of the National Advisory Council (NAC) of India which was established by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. On 01-January-2015, a Cabinet resolution was passed to replace the Planning Commission with the newly formed NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India). The Union Government of India announced the formation of NITI Aayog on 01-January-2015. The first meeting of NITI Aayog was chaired by Narendra Modi on 08-February-2015.

Finance Minister during that time made the following observation on the necessity of creating NITI Aayog, "The 65-year-old Planning Commission had become a redundant organization. It was relevant in a command economy structure, but not any longer. India is a diversified country and its states are in various phases of economic development along with their own strengths and weaknesses. In this context, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to economic planning is obsolete. It cannot make India competitive in today's global economy."

NITI Aayog has started a new initiative on the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi called NITI Lectures: Transforming India. The aim of this initiative is to invite globally reputed policy makers, experts, administrators to India to share their knowledge, expertise, experience in policy making and good governance with Indian counterparts. This initiative will be a series of lectures started with first lecture delivered by Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam. He delivered lecture on subject called "India and the Global Economy" at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. The Prime Minister spoke about the idea behind this lecture series and stated that his vision for India is rapid transformation, not gradual evolution.

On 31-August-2017, NITI Aayog developed a State Statistics Handbook that consolidates key statistics across sectors for every Indian State and Union Territory. While the State data on crucial indicators is currently fragmented across different sources, this handbook provides a one-stop database of important State statistics.

NITI Aayog has taken initiative on blockchain usages in e-governance and has conceptualized the tech stack as 'India Chain'. India Chain is the name given to NITI Aayog's ambitious project to develop a nationwide blockchain network.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things, blockchain and big data hold potential to take India to new heights