After ‘Make in India’, now ‘Think in India’

New Delhi: Union minister for human resources development Smriti Irani on Thursday stated that the government is planning to come up with a “Think in India” drive to encourage students and researchers to come up with innovations and new ideas and to keep the talent back home from leaving abroad.

The minister said the campaign would aim to curb the outward flow of the country’s students, who leave their homeland in search of backing for their ideas.

“We all know the prime minister has spoken about the ‘Make in India’ project and we in the ministry of HRD want to complement it by ‘Think in India’ campaign through the ‘Rashtriya Avishkaar Yojana’,” she said.

She said the government hopes for positive collaboration with the industry. She said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had once expressed his desire to facilitate interaction with the best academicians for children who cannot go abroad overseas to get education.

“We have initiated a programme Global Initiative for Academic Networks called GIAN, where we are seeking to invite very celebrated academicians and industry experts from across the world, who will come and teach at least one semester in India at the cost of Government of India, so that our students and faculty members benefit,” she said.

Ms Irani said IITs, IIMs, Central universities, NITs are already drawing up their wishlist.

She said that in the last six months, the HRD ministry has set up committees to look at the mandate and the overall functioning of the UGC, the AICTE and also for the National Council for Teachers’ Education.

The HRD minister said the ministry had also undertaken a study of methodologies of setting up institutions especially with government funding.

The HRD minister said that the government was aware of challenges vis-à-vis allocation of land and hence a committee had been set up to understand where we can use land in a more optimum fashion, she added.