Inauguration of MHRD Innovation Cell (MIC)
AICTE HQ, New Delhi
30th August 2018
MHRD Innovation Cell (MIC) was inaugurated on 30th August 2018 at the AICTE HQ by Shri Prakash Javdekar Ji, Honorable Minister of HRD, GoI and Dr. Satya Pal Singh Ji, Honorable Minister of State for HRD (Higher Education) in the presence of Shri R Subrahmanyam Ji, Secretary (Higher Education), MHRD, Shri S S Sandhu Ji, Additional Secretary (Technical Education), MHRD and Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India (GoI) has constituted MHRD Innovation Cell (MIC) to promote innovation related activities in Higher Education Institutes (HEI) across India. MIC is a GoI initiative to shape the innovation ecosystem in the country. MIC will operate from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Headquarters (HQ), New Delhi.
More than 400 academicians from HEIs across the India attended this event. Mr. Probeer Sahw, HOD-ECE & EEE represented Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida at the event.
Shri S S Sandhu Ji, in his welcome address said that innovation is not only the need of the hour but now a matter of survival. He elaborated that the organizations with no focus on innovation will be irrelevant in the coming time. He added that India has both the quantity and quality of able researchers yet it lacks behind in innovations due to poor ecosystem for nurturing innovations. He mentioned that the purpose behind constituting MIS is to create such an ecosystem in HEIs in India.
Prof. Sahasrabudhe briefed the audience about MIC and its objectives. He said that MIC will strengthen innovation ecosystem in India by:
- Developing a network of Innovation Clubs constituting of faculties, industrialists, bankers and most importantly students in all HEIs across India.
- Framing a Startup Policy for providing grants to budding innovators.
- Taking Smart India Hackathon (SIH) to next level and increase student participation.
- Launching Innovation Ranking framework, ARIIA on the lines of NIRF.
Then the Honorable Minister of HRD and the Honorable MoS for HRD (Higher Education) digitally launched the MIC. Also, the official MIC website went live shortly after the launch.
Dr. Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer (CIO), MIC and Innovation Director, MHRD, the brain behind SIH briefed the audience about the need of constituting MIC and the action plan to develop an ecosystem for innovation in India. He informed the audience that more than 20,000 start-ups have received close to 40 billion USD in investments under Startup India initiative. He drew the attention of the audience to the fact that India ranks poorly on the Global Innovation Index (GII). India is on rank 57 as per the GII-2018 reports. He blamed the current practices of HEIs for this and added that such practices hamper the cognitive skills of the students. He said that MIC will focus on improving the position of India in GII rankings by forming Innovation Clubs in all HEIs with initial target of setting up 1000 such clubs in coming few months.
Shri R Subrahmanyan Ji unveiled the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) framework for ranking HEIs. He said that institutes will be able to participate in the first edition of ARIIA from 15th October 2018 (Innovation Day) and the rankings will be released on 28th February 2018 (Science Day). Then the Honorable Minister of HRD released the ARIIA manual and Dr. Jere presented the parameters of ARIIA to the audience. After this the two students from IIT-Guwahati, who designed the ARIIA logo, were felicitated by the minister.
The MoS for HRD (Higher Education) in his address said that innovation must be an integral and implicit part of our culture.
The Minister of HRD in his address said the role of the Innovation Clubs will be to create awareness, instill imagination and implement experimentation for promoting the culture of innovation amongst the students. He then called the 3rd edition of Smart India Hackathon open and added that he is enthralled by the energetic participation of students in the previous two editions. He mentioned that around 150,000 students will participate in the 3rd edition of SIH and from this year the problem statements of SIH will be based on the inputs provided by both the government agencies and private industries. He concluded his address with the slogan of JAI INNOVATION.
Prof. M P Poonia, Vice Chairman, AICTE then extended the vote of thanks to all the dignitaries and the first session ended with the national anthem being played.
The post-lunch session started with the address by Prof. Partha Pratim Chakraborty, Director, IIT-Kharagpur. He called for deeper understanding of innovation and emphasized on the need of scalable innovations. He also said that the innovation starts with desperation and added that a person cannot become an innovator unless that person is desperate. He also added that innovations should reap both the economic and the social benefits and must be inspired by the real life problems being faced by the country. Thus, he said that an innovator must not only be desperate but deshperate also.
Mr. Hiranmay Mahanta briefed the audience about the GoI initiative National Student Startup Policy and elaborated on the efforts put by AICTE to promote entrepreneurship in India.
Dr. Anita Gupta, Associate Head, National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), GoI briefed the audience about various flagship programs of DST likeInnovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (IEDC), Nidhi-Prayas, Plugin, DST-TI India Innovation Challenge Design Contest (IICDC) etc. for the students, innovators and entrepreneurs.
Mr. R. Ramanan, Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) briefed the audience about the activities carried out by AIM to promote culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. He primarily mentioned about the achievements of Atal Tinkering Laband its contribution in educating and inspiring school going children about latest technologies like 3-D printers, IoT etc.
The session ended with the extension of vote of thanks by Prof. A P Mittal, Member Secretary, AICTE.