Atal Innovation Mission Foster Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Here is our today’s edition of Current Affairs wherein we will discuss the Atal Innovation Mission and its relevance to the UPSC CSE syllabus which is listed below.

For Pelims: Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Ayog, ARISE 

For Mains: Innovation in India, Steps taken for promotion of innovation, NITI Ayog 

Probable Question

What are the steps taken by the government of India to reap the benefits of demographic dividend through innovation and entrepreneurship in the country?

Context

Recently, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog launched Call for Applications for its two leading programs Atal Incubation Centre (AIC) and Atal Community Innovation Centre (ACIC).

Here is our yesterday’s edition of Current Affairs on the Maternal Health situation in India.

About News 

• The call for applications is a step to expand the current ecosystem of incubators and to provide them with access to global benchmarks and best practices. 
• Both the programs, Atal Incubation Centre (AIC) and Atal Community Innovation Centre (ACIC), envision creating and supporting the innovation ecosystem in the country by establishing world-class institutions which shall help budding entrepreneurs of the country.
• These AICs and ACICs will play a pivotal role in enriching the start-up and entrepreneurship ecosystem of India and echo the anthem of Atmanirbhar Bharat.

Atal Innovation Mission

• Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is Government of India’s flagship initiative to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country and was set up in 2016.
• All the initiatives of AIM are currently monitored and managed systematically using real-time MIS systems and dynamic dashboards.
• AIM is also currently having its programs reviewed by third party agencies for ensuring continuous improvements.

6 major Initiatives of Atal Innovation Mission

• Atal Tinkering Labs
  • ATL is a workspace where young minds can give shape to their ideas through hands-on do-it-yourself mode and learn innovation skills.
  • Young children will get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand the concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).
  • ATL would contain educational and learning ‘do it yourself’ kits and equipment on science, electronics, robotics, open-source microcontroller boards, sensors and 3D printers and computers.
  • The objective of this scheme is to foster curiosity, creativity, and imagination in young minds; and inculcate skills such as design mindset, computational thinking, adaptive learning, physical computing etc.
• Atal Incubation Centres
  • Atal Incubation Centres (AICs) that would nurture innovative start-ups in their pursuit to become scalable and sustainable business enterprises.
  • AIM will support these AICs in creating world-class incubation facilities across the country with the state of the art physical infrastructure, in terms of capital equipment and operating facilities available to their incubatee start-ups, coupled with the availability of sectoral experts for mentoring.
  • Since 2016, AIM has established 68 Atal Incubation Centres across 18 states and 3 UTs.
• Atal Community Innovation Centre
  • Atal Community Innovation Centers have been launched to encourage a spirit of entrepreneurship in the underserved/unserved regions of India by providing enabling infrastructure and facilitating an environment for innovation.
  • ACIC is envisaged to serve the unserved/underserved areas of the country with respect to the start-up and innovation ecosystem.
  •  AIM has established 14 Atal Community Innovation Centres across the country.
• Atal New India Challenge
  • Atal New India Challenge is a flagship program of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog.
  • The program aims to seek, select, support and nurture technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and societal relevance.
• Mentor India Campaign
  • The Mentor India program is a voluntary national movement being led by AIM.
  • In this campaign skilled professionals provide pro-bono mentoring to young ATL innovators, with a strong sentiment towards nation building.
  • These skilled volunteers, who are the young innovators of India and enable them to experience, learn and practice 21st century skills such as human centric design approach, computational thinking, physical computing etc.
• ARISE
  • The Aatmanirbhar Bharat ARISE-ANIC program is a national initiative to promote research & innovation and increase competitiveness of Indian startups and MSMEs.
  • The objective of Aatmanirbhar Bharat ARISE-ANIC program is to proactively collaborate with esteemed Ministries and the associated industries to catalyse research, innovation and facilitate innovative solutions to sectoral problems.
  • The objective is also to provide a steady stream of innovative products & solutions where the Central Government Ministries / Departments will become the potential first buyers.

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