W-Feb NIC & NKN- sam pitroda

Realising that innovation is the engine for national and global growth, employment, competitiveness and sharing of opportunities in the 21st century,
the Government of India has declared 2010-2020 as the ‘Decade of Innovation’.

• To prepare a roadmap for innovation in the country, and formulate and implement a model of inclusive innovation, the Prime Minister constituted the National Innovation Council (NInC) in September 2010.
• The National Innovation Council began its work in November 2010
• sam pitroda is the chairmen

Multiple agencies as mode of Flexi Innovation Funds

a)

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan – One of the largest flagship programmes of the government has

decentralised planning for elementary education. In its project guidelines it has a provision

for flexible funds to the extent of Rs 50 lakhs per annum per district in order to encourage

innovative responses to local specific challenges for girls’ education, Early Childhood Care

and Education, interventions for SC/ST community children, computer education for upper

primary level children, including training.

b)

National Rural Health Mission – Similarly the project guidelines of the largest decentralised

health programmes in the country also provide for a provision for flexible funds to the extent

of Rs 50 lakhs per annum per district in order to encourage innovative responses to local,

specific challenges in health delivery.

c)

XIIIth Finance Commission – The XIIIth Finance Commission in its awards to the States

has earmarked Rs 1 crore per district under District Innovation Fund (DIF) for innovations.

It is expected that this will promote local innovations.

Policy Directives to Embed Innovation

(a)

Innovation made integral part of all Cabinet notes: On the directive of the Prime Minister,

all notes to the Cabinet have to report on how specifically the policy under consideration

enhances innovation. This became operational from June 2009.

(b)

Centre for Innovations in Public Services (CIPS): On the suggestion of the XIIIth

Finance Commission the CIPS was created “to help create a climate and nurture a culture

for accelerating and diffusing innovation in public systems”. It is located in the Administrative

Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad.

Crowd Sourcing Innovation: CSIR Portal for Open Source Drug Discovery

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research has launched a portal for Open Source Drug

Discovery. OSDD is a CSIR Team India Consortium with Global Partnership with a vision to

provide affordable healthcare to the developing world by providing a global platform where the best

minds can collaborate and collectively endeavour to solve the complex problems associated with

discovering novel therapies for neglected tropical diseases like Malaria, Tuberculosis, Leshmaniasis,

etc. It is a concept to collaboratively aggregate the biological and genetic information available to

scientists in order to use it to hasten the discovery of drugs.

Networks for Promoting Innovation: National Knowledge Network (NKN)

The National Knowledge Network consists of an ultra-high speed pan India unified 10-100Gbps core

network of optic fibre cable with the aim to synergise research collaborations between stakeholders

from science, technology, higher education, health, governance, agriculture. This would encourage,

enable, enrich and empower the user community to test and implement innovative ideas without

any access constraints. While NKN will connect nearly 1500 nodes covering all universities, Ministry

of Human Resource Development will connect all colleges to the NKN.

The National Knowledge Network (NKN) is being developed by the Government of India as a

high speed multi gigagbit network which aims to connect the country’s educational and research

institutions for real time research and collaboration.

• The NKN by networking all knowledge institutions and providing them with high speed connectivity aims to facilitate flow of information and create a platform for collaboration between researchers, academic faculty and students from diverse backgrounds and geographies.
• NKN also enables global collaboration by linking researchers from different educational and research networks from across the world, such as TEIN3, CERN,GLORIAD

(Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development) and so on.

• NKN is already connected to TEIN3. TEIN3 is the third-generation
  Trans-Eurasia Information Network
  , a dedicated high speed regional research and education network in Asia and Europe. It
  provides a large-scale research and education data-communications network for the Asia-Pacific region.
  Its purpose is to extend and encourage research and education IP connectivity, linking Asia-Pacific researchers to each other and to their counterparts in Europe.
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  It does this via fast, direct links to

  Europe’s multi-gigabit GÉANT network, providing the Asia-Pacific countries with a gateway for

  global collaboration.
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  TEIN3 allows students across the region to attend

  remote lectures via interactive video-conferences

Investing in Building Potential Innovators: The DST INSPIRE Programme

The Department of Science and Technology has launched the INSPIRE programme to scout and

identify young talent for careers in the science stream. It comprises of

a) 2,00,000 INSPIRE Awards per year, each of Rs. 5,000 per award. Every high school is provided

with a minimum of 2 awards per school in 5 years, for children in the 10-15 age group. In

Science project exhibition 5 to 10 percent of entries in Science Project Exhibitions will be

selected by jury for State and national level prizes.

b) For children in the 16 to 18 age group, 50,000 INSPIRE Internships are awarded every year

to the top 1% of students in class X, who get to interact in summer and winter camps with

Nobel Prize winners.

c) 10,000 INSPIRE Scholarships of Rs 80,000 per year are awarded for 5 years to youth in the

top 1% in their respective Class XII Board examinations courses in basic and natural science

at the undergraduate and upto postgraduate levels.

d) 1000 Fellowships are provided to students who enrol in the doctoral course in the 22-27 age

group and

e) 1000 Inspire Faculty positions in 27-32 age groups are offered to young inquisitive minds who

would like to continue in the area of teaching.

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