By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 28, 2017: In order to make India an innovation driven economy, NITI Aayog, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) together launched a mega initiative “India Innovation Index” that will rank States on Innovations through country's first online innovation index portal that will capture date on innovation from all Indian States on innovation and regularly update it in real time.

Improvement in the quality, research and innovation in educational institutions is an on-going endeavour and the Central Government has been making a constant effort in this direction.

The Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) inter alia provides support to State Governments for enhancing research quality, incubation centers, innovation hubs, etc. Till date, an amount of Rs. 12.03 crore has been released to 3 States namely Maharashtra, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu.

Further, the Smart India Hackathon and Smart India Hardware Hackathon have been launched to improve the innovative abilities of the students in the Higher Education Institutions. The Smart India Hackathon has received huge response when it was launched in 2017 and this would be continued as annual event. The projects for promoting research and innovation like the IMPRINT and Uchhatar Avishkar Yojana (UAY) have brought focused attention of the scientific community on the need for promoting innovation. The Start up India initiative of the Government has also put in place a mechanism for identifying and incubating the innovative ideas.

The Government is also promoting research parks (RPs) and technology business incubators (TBIs) which would nurture and promote the innovative ideas till they become commercial ventures. To complement the renewed focus of the Government on developing indigenous Research and Development capabilities, boosting manufacturing and creating a successful startup culture in the country, five new Research Parks at IIT Delhi, IIT Guwahati, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, and IISc Bangalore at a total cost of Rs.75.00 crore each have been approved by the Government. Approval has also been accorded for continued financial support for two already approved Research Parks at IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur at a cost of Rs.100 crore each. The Research Park at IIT Gandhinagar at a total cost of Rs.90 crore is being funded by the Department of Science & Technology. In addition to this, the Research Park at IIT Madras is fully functional.

This information was given by the Minister of State (HRD), Dr. Satyapal Singh today in a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question.