‘Tamil Nadu Innovative Initiative’ established to promote innovation in Tamil Nadu

Chennai: Keeping pace with her commitment to achieve “Vision 2023” for Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa on Friday announced the establishment of ‘Tamil Nadu Innovative Initiative’ to promote innovation in the state by awarding those coming up with innovative ideas.

“A separate fund will be created with a corpus of Rs 150 crore” Ms Jayalalithaa said while making a suo moto statement. The best innovations would receive the Chief Minister’s Award and the move would facilitate innovation in government departments and State-owned enterprises. This would also be extended to non-government enterprises.

The state government would sign a memorandum of understanding with the Jameel Poverty Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US to study and assess the efficacy of the various state government programmes. Through this, experts in school education, sanitation and poverty eradication would be appointed to evaluate various ongoing projects for better governance. She said Rs 3 crore would be allocated for the purpose during the current fiscal.

Ms Jayalalithaa informed that about 750 poor farmers in various districts would be provided assistance to carry out integrated farming at an outlay of Rs.8 crore.

The Chief Minister also announced yet another initiative named after her, the “Amma Makkal Sevai Maiyam” (Amma People’s Service Centre), which would be a one stop-shop for people approaching urban local bodies like Corporations and municipalities with a number of requirements, including birth and death certificates, taxation issues, commercial licences, among others.

Officials would meet people every Wednesday and make efforts for time-bound delivery of services while heads of departments would monitor delivery of services online for faster solutions to people, Ms Jayalalithaa added.