Amitabh Kant | Satwik Mishra

Innovation Ecosystem in India | UPSC

REALISTIC POTENTIAL

• FERTILE GROUND : India is a fertile ground to be a technology-led innovation garage.
• INTERNET USAGE : It is the fastest growing country in terms of Internet usage, with over 700 million users and the number projected to rise to 974 million by 2025.
• FINANCIAL INCLUSION : The JAM trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) trinity has 404 million Jan Dhan bank accounts with 1.2 billion Aadhaar and 1.2 billion mobile subscribers.

• POSSIBILITIES : Innovation in India is being structured around the triad of collaboration, facilitation and responsible regulation.
• CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION : In his famous essay, ‘I Pencil’, Leonard Read brings forward the wonder of collaboration between people cutting trees, mining graphite, working in factories, marketing, designing and managing, just to produce a single pencil.
• EXPONENTIAL GROWTH : Innovation is a recombinant and brings tangential benefits through products and services that may not even have been its initial purpose.
• POTENTIAL OF TECHNOLOGY : People tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short run, but to underestimate it in the long run.

RECENT EVENTS

• VAISHVIK BHARATIYA VAIGYANIK (VAIBHAV) SUMMIT : It was inaugurated on October 2, more than 3,000 overseas Indian-origin academicians and scientists from 55 countries participated to ideate on innovative solutions to our challenges.
• A TRUE SANGAM : The Prime Minister articulated -“a true sangam or confluence of great minds” where “we sit to form our long-lasting association for empowering India and our planet”.
• RAISE 2020 SUMMIT  : This has been concomitant to the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment (RAISE) 2020 summit , which was from October 5-9.

START-UP DISRUPTIONS

• DISRUPTING START UPS : This focus on celebrating innovation has led to several start-ups disrupting the Indian market.
• THE RECENT WINNERS : ‘Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge’ – Chingari with its video communication tools and MapMyIndia with its elaborative maps, ‘Logically’ are becoming household names.
• NEO-BANKING : Yelo is offering neo-banking payment and money transfer services online for workers in the gig economy.
• NIRAMAI : Non-Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Intelligence uses an AI-based thermal imaging portable tool that carries out non-invasive breast cancer screening for women for early detection.

• QURE.AI : It uses AI for health-care diagnostics in rural India, tackling challenges such as tuberculosis and now COVID-19.
• VERNACULAR.AI : It offers a voice-based AI product that can understand up to 10 Indian languages and around 160 dialects.

MANY INCENTIVES

• RISK CAPITAL : Innovation needs risk capital in terms of resources and psychological security for researchers.
• CONDUCIVE ENVIRONMENT : It needs an environment where it is safe to fail.

A COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORK 

Government of India is incentivising research and development with several schemes such as:

• Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) scholarships
• The Ramanujan Fellowship, the Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN) scheme
• Smart India Hackathons (SIH)
• Atal Innovation Mission (AIM)
• Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) scheme
• Future Skills PRIME (Programme for Reskilling/Upskilling of IT Manpower for Employability) capacity building platform
• Scheme for Transformational and Advanced Research in Sciences (STARS)
• Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC)
• Impactful Policy Research in Social Science (IMPRESS)

MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH

• REGULATORY SANDBOXES : The Reserve Bank of India, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) allow for regulatory sandboxes for piloting new ideas.
• CLOUD SERVICES : The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recently introduced recommendations for regulating cloud services in India, suggesting a light-touch regulation in collaboration with industry.