Higher educational institutions should drive innovation, start-up ecosystem – Dr Subhash Sarkar

Dr Subhash Sarkar virtually releases the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2021

Minister of State for Education, Dr. Subhas Sarkar today virtually announced the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2021.

On this occasion, Dr. Sarkar said that ARIIA ranking will certainly inspire Indian institutions to reorient their mind-set and build ecosystems to encourage high quality research, innovation and entrepreneurship in their campuses. Giving emphasis on promoting innovation to achieve a $5 trillion economy by year 2025, Dr Sarkar said that more than quantity, the institute should focus on quality of innovations & research. This will help us achieve the Atmanirbhar Bharat in true sense.

Dr Sarkar said that ‘Emphasis on Innovation’ is amongst the three vows taken by our Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent Kashi visit. The other two vows are for Swatch Bharat and Atmabhirbhar Bharat. Considering all these 3 vows, Innovation is the only path for their fulfilment. “Hence, we need to give huge push to Innovation and Entrepreneurship within our educational institutions and ARIIA is one major initiative in that direction,” he said.

While referring to India’s consistent growth in Innovation and Start-up, Dr Sarkar said that India is one of the largest higher educational systems in the world. There are ample opportunities for higher educational institutions to play the role of enabler to drive Indian innovation and start-up ecosystem. A concerted effort by our higher educational institutions is required towards inculcating the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among our students and to prepare faculty as innovators, out of the box thinkers, creative problem solvers, entrepreneurs, and job creators.

This will definitely bring a revolution not only at economic level but also at the social, environmental front. Further, recently announced New Educational Policy 2020 will also make these efforts more effective and efficient and impactful in the long run.

Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) is an initiative of Ministry of Education (MoE), Govt. of India to systematically rank all major higher educational institutions in India on indicators related to Innovation, Start-up and Entrepreneurship Development” amongst students and faculties. ARIIA critically evaluate institutions on parameters like patent filing and granted, number of registered students and faculty start-ups, fund generation by incubated start-ups, specialised infrastructure created by institutions to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, etc.

ARIIA-2021 ranking is announced in various categories which includes Centrally funded technical institutions (eg IITs, NITs, etc), State Universities, State standalone Technical colleges, Private universities, Private standalone technical colleges, non-technical government and private universities and institutions. This year the participation has almost doubled to 1438 Institutes and have quadrupled over first edition.

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