NITI Aayog has given permission to 3,000 additional schools to set up Atal Tinkering Labs under its Atal Innovation Mission (AIM).
This will make the number count of schools with Atal Tinkering Labs rise to 5,441.
What's there in it for the schools?
As per the NITI Aayog: “The selected schools shall receive a grant of INR 20 lakh spread over the next five years to establish Atal Tinkering Labs for nurturing innovation and entrepreneurial spirit among secondary school children across India”.Each ATL would be provided with an amount of INR 10 Lakh over a maximum period of 5 years for:
- Maintenance of equipment.
- Purchase of consumables.
- Organising popular science lecture series.
- Innovation events.
- Other scientific activities, competitions, and payment of honorariums to the faculty and mentors involved.
The Vision
- NITI Aayog has a vision of establishing Atal Tinkering Labs in every district of the country. This is very much needed for enabling an atmosphere that leads to a transformational change in the area of technological innovation.
- NITI Aayog has an ambitious target of setting up tinkering labs across 30K schools in India in the next three years.
How all of this was set into motion?
- It was the Startup India Action Plan that played a key role in launching the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) with the Self-Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU) programme.
Objectives of AIM:
- Key focus on providing support to innovators and mentoring them to become successful entrepreneurs.
- To provide an ecosystem where innovative ideas are generated in the futuristic fields of robotics, IoT (internet of things), 3D printing, holographic technologies etc. and those ideas are efficiently promoted.
