NEW DELHI
An innovation promotion platform in the NITI Aayog, with an initial fund of Rs 150 crore for research and development, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) has been announced by Arun Jaitley, the Finance Minister.
It will be an innovation promotion platform involving academics, entrepreneurs and researchers and has been named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Presenting the Union Budget for the next fiscal, the Finance Minister told that the AIM platform will promote a network of world-class innovation hubs with an earmarked initial sum of Rs 150 crore.
Drawing national and international experiences AIM will focus to foster a culture of innovation, research and development and scientific research in India.
A science policy expert Pranav Desai stressing that focus should be on networking instead of entrepreneurship-based innovation for Innovation said "Innovation is certainly very important, but entrepreneurship-based innovations are not important anymore."
In areas like health and education and in terms of setting up new IITs, AIIMSs and IIMs the Budget has scored up.
The professor and chairman of Centre for Studies in Science Policy (CSSP), School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Desai said that rather than simply boosting the entrepreneurs, the government should encourage interactions between industry, university, researchers and different players.
Highlighting the importance of interactions he said that there cannot be effective innovation unless interactions are encouraged.
The acting director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata that runs under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Chitra Mandal emphasized the need to lay down concrete plans on translating research into applications.
The gap between research and their commercial applications is to be reduced and the ways of approaching the industries, networking with them is necessary for enabling the huge amount of research done to benefit the society.
With regards to research output in life sciences, the Nature Index Report declared the CSIR-IICB the first in position among all CSIR Laboratories.
In Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Assam six more AIIMS-like institutions will be set up. On the lines of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bihar will get a second institute modelled.
Along with the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in Jammu & Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh, Jaitley also announced the setting up of an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Karnataka.
Multiplying the AIIIMS model of health and research is boost. And the institutions will be established in areas that require educational and technological institutes. Saying that the setting up of these institutes won't dilute the importance of the original institutes and he remarked that it is a very good step and a positive in the budget.