Over 9,600 schools get funds from Atal Innovation Mission for promoting innovation

Government think tank Niti Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) has so far funded 9,606 schools in 720-plus districts of the country for the establishment of Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs), Parliament was informed on Monday.

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Planning Rao Inderjit Singh said the Centre is encouraging schools to provide exposure of science and technology to students so that they can be exposed with futuristic technology platforms.

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Singh said to create an ever-evolving ecosystem of start-ups and entrepreneurs, AIM has been establishing world-class incubators called Atal Incubation Centres (AICs) at universities, institutions and corporates among others. Till date AIM has successfully operationalised 68 Atal Incubation Centres with universities / institutions / private players across India, he added.

According to Singh, in schools, AIM facilitates to set up network of Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATLs)with a vision to cultivate one million children in India as Neoteric Innovators. The objective of this scheme is to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination in youngminds and inculcate skills such as design mind-set, computational thinking, adaptivelearning, physical computing, rapid calculations, measurements etc, he noted.