Central Government to Launch Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan by 2015

In an event held in the capital last week, Minister of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Smriti Irani said that Central Government is planning to launch a Rashtriya Aviskhar Abhiyan or National Innovation Mission by next year under which an enquiry-based learning system could get generated for future generations in the field of maths and science.

At the FICCI Higher Education Summit (HES) 2014, Irani spoke about the brain drain and its possible way out for not letting this happen anymore. Other initiatives such as ‘Unnat Bharat Abhiyan’ were also talked about in the summit, where IITs, IIMs and various central universities are scheduled to turn up for overall rural upliftment in the educational sector. In the same summit, Greg Clark, Minister of State for Universities, Science and Cities UK made the announcement of Generation UK-India programme which would invite 25,000 young UK aspirants as teaching assistants in Indian Schools and would be able to learn about the cultural mannerisms of the country through various courses.

Along with these influential programmes, project E-Qual made its voice clear in the summit. Supriya Chaudhuri, professor of Jadavpur University, Kolkata made it clear that under the project various universities like, University of Hyderabad, Ambedkar University- Delhi, Shiv Nadar University, King’s College London and the University of Bologna, Italy are designing courses together in human ecology, critical thinking, design courses etc.  “These courses will cater to universities in India and Europe and will be taught through blended learning”, said Supriya Chaudhuri.