Highlighting the opportunities for higher education institutions to play a key role in innovation and the start-up ecosystem, Union Minister of State for Education Dr Subhas Sarkar on Wednesday said it could bring a revolution not only at the economic level but also on the social and environmental front.While virtually inaugurating the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA) 2021, he said the New Education Policy 2020 will make these efforts more effective and impactful in the long run.According to him, the ARIIA ranking will inspire Indian institutions to reorient their mindset and build ecosystems to encourage high-quality research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in their campuses.Emphasizing on promoting innovation to achieve a $5 trillion economy by 2025, Sarkar said that more than quantity, the institute should focus on quality of innovations and research.This will help us achieve 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' in the true sense, he said, adding that 'Emphasis on Innovation' is one of the three vows taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his recent visit to Kashi. The other two vows were for 'Swachh Bharat' and 'Atmanirbhar Bharat'.Considering all these three vows, innovation is the only path for their fulfilment.Hence, we need to give a 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-ups, Sarkar said that India has one of the largest higher educational systems in the world. A concerted effort by our higher educational institutions is, therefore, 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.The Union Minister also appreciated the efforts by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and MoE's Innovation Cell in planning and implementing ARIIA and its two editions successfully. He also launched the fourth edition of ARIIA and urged all the higher educational institutions to participate.The ARIIA is an initiative of the Ministry of Education (MoE) to systematically rank all major higher educational institutions in India on indicators related to innovation, start-up and entrepreneurship development amongst students and faculty.The ARIIA-2021 ranking has been announced in various categories which include centrally funded technical institutions -- IITs, NITs, 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 1,438 institutes and has quadrupled over the first edition.