Imprint India: Civil Services Mentor Magazine - February - 2016

Imprint India

Technological development is necessary for any country to stay ahead from other countries. Japan is best example for this, despite having various challenges they became a developed nation due continuos development in technology. India also seen lot of development in the technological field. India is among top ten countries in terms of scientific publications. India has seen great development in space technology as well as in terms of communication. In other fields like health and education also have seen good develpment in technology. However there is still a lot needs to be done. The enormity of the challenge of providing equal opportunities for everyone to ever-growing population is also a historic opportunity for correcting sectoral and social imbalances. The vision of technological development is to realize the country’s human resource potential to its fullest with equity and inclusion. Technology should be used for the development and improvement in the lifes of people, particularly, to the vulnerable sections of the society. Policies and programmes for strengthening research and innovations have to be initiated and institutions, public or private, will have to be encouraged, to engage in stretching the frontiers of knowledge.

For the development of research and technology institutions in India, government of India has launched Imprint India programme. ‘IMPRINT India’ is a Pan-IIT and IISc joint initiative to develop a roadmap for research to solve major engineering and technology challenges in ten technology domains relevant to India. IMPRINT India is synergizing platform for institutions, academia, industry that encourages research & innovation, making it socially more relevant. National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 made it compulsory to conduct common entrance exam for admission in technical institutions in the country. For admission to Engineering and Architecture/Planning programmes, Government of India has laid down a Three Exam Scheme (JEE and AIEEE at the National Level and the State Level Engineering Entrance Examinations (SLEEE) for State Level Institutions with an option to join AIEEE). This was done in order to maintain a level playing field and standard in technical education. President while launching IMPRINT India’ said that the New Education Policy (NEP) must alter the dynamics of the education sector and help us achieve the GER target of 30 percent by 2020. The Prime Minister also laid stress on the importance of innovation and technology for the progress and development of the nation. He said institutions of higher education should give primacy to innovation in learning.PM said that finding solutions to challenges like global warming and converting waste to wealth were key to the rise of India. IMPRINT India should be seen with GIAN programme, which starting this November, in the coming one year, under GIAN 400 foreign academicians will be welcomed in government institutions to impart new knowledge to students here and share new teaching methodologies with faculty.

There are various objective to Imprint India initiative. Objectives of the programme are mentioned below:

• identify areas of immediate relevance to society requiring innovation,
• direct scientific research into identified areas,
• ensure higher funding support for research into these areas and
• measure outcomes of the research effort with reference to impact on the standard of living in the rural/urban areas.

IMPRINT India has given ten themes to different IIT’s and IISC. The ten coordinating institutions have done extensive consultations and arrived at specific themes in each area of research that has immediate social relevance. These themes for IIT/IISc are given below:-

(a) Health Care - IIT Kharagpur,
(b) Computer Science and ICT – IIT Kharagpur,
(c) Advance Materials – IIT Kanpur,
(d) Water Resources and River systems – IIT Kanpur,
(e) Sustainable Urban Design – IIT Roorkee,
(f) Defence – IIT Madras,
(g) Manufacturing – IIT Madras,
(h) Nano-technology Hardware- IIT Bombay,
(i) Environmental Science and Climate Change – IISc, Bangalore and
(j) Energy Security – IIT Bombay.

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