‘ATMA NIRBHARA BHARAT’ , is what we hear today throughout the country. The NDA government has came up with several policies to boost up domestic manufacturing and to increase  the export base of the country. MAKE IN INDIA, SKILL INDIA, etc are some of the measures taken up by the government to improve investments and to promote indigenous talents. During the pandemic India again started gathering momentum as an innovative hub with its developments in the field of healthcare and related industries. This has led to the increased significance of the ATAL INNOVATION MISSION (AIM).

AIM was started by the NITI AAYOG with an objective to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the country. This is an umbrella structure to oversee innovation ecosystem of the country.
Features

1.Helps the innovators with its grant in aid of upto 50% of the project cost
2.Provides different platforms and collaboration opportunities with local,national and global stakeholders
3.It focuses on cross community learning and exchange of ideas and technology
4.It also encourages PPP model for operational excellence and thought leadership

India has an advantageous demography which if not given enough skills keeping in mind  the future requirements will turn into a disaster for India.  AIM  had taken up several initiatives in bring out young talents of the country. Under this programme the government has come up with Atal Tinkering Labs, Incubation Centres, Community Innovation Centre and ARISE. 

It becomes easy for the government to promote indigenous talents in the innovation by using the already existing infrastructure under AIM.  The atal community innovation centre can be better used to stimulate community centric innovation and ideas which was widely seen during the pandemic where some like minded people joined together to come up with low cost ventilators and many more.

For example, the SKS microfinance has successfully innovated on the Grameen Bank microfinance model which is now a major financial source for farmers.

ATMA NIRBHARA BHARAT  widely believes the concept of “Big ideas,Start small”. Every major innovation that is now successful started small and created wide changes in the society. Akshaya Patra– world’s largest NGO run school meal program also falls into this category. Goonj has also started creating rural from urban waste. Sometimes huge developmental challenges can be fought with non linear solutions just as MV Foundation’s initiative to take kids out of child labour and into schools.

AIM provides better opportunities to promote local ideas, technologies and innovation from the school level with the help of tinkering labs. The New Education Policy of India also fosters innovative attitude among the students at different stages. Several state governments are coming up with collaborations just as Karnataka Government with Azim Premji Foundation to innovate new ideas of improving primary education in government schools – a process to assess the school’s capability to build student competencies rather than mere marks.

Thus India has a great opportunity to improve its domestic technology market and reduce dependency on other countries by perfectly using its demographic strength. What India needs is to identify the areas where technology is far from reality such as agriculture, environment protection , sustainable development ,etc.

It is widely believed that “Innovation is for India, what quality was for Japan; a transforming agent”. When a small country with limited resources has succeeded in reducing its dependency by focussing on its technical development,why not India with a massive demography and resources available.