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India’s Climbing rank in Global Innovation Indices 

India has been steadily climbing up the global innovation trajectory demonstrated by its ranking in the Global Innovation Index (GII) released by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and International IP index by the US Chamber of Commerce. In the latest International IP index rankings released in 2023, India is ranked 40th in the world. It may be interesting to note that there has been steep climb from 81st position in GII 2015 to 40th in 2023 also coincides with the setup of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) by the Indian government’s policy think-tank, NITI Aayog (formerly Planning Commission). Several governmental & non-governmental agencies at both central and state-level as well as industry & industry associations have also contributed to this innovation boost.  Visionary national and state-level programs like Startup India, Smart India Hackathon, NASSCOM Product conclave & Emerge 50, Startup Tamil Nadu, and ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu have also reinforced efforts towards creating knowledge capital and enriching the national innovation ecosystem.  

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) 

Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) was set up in 2016 by the NITI Aayog to promote a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in India. Its objective is to create a conducive ambience and atmosphere for transformation of ideas into innovative solutions at schools, universities, research agencies, startups and industry including MSME. In other words, move from idea to product and product to startup with the help of seamless public-private partnerships.  AIM also provides policy inputs to NITI Aayog and various Government bodies, create awareness and provide knowledge inputs in creating innovation challenges and funding mechanism to government; and also develops new programs and policies for fostering innovation in different sectors of economy. The AIM report card in the last 6 years has been nothing short of spectacular: 

• 10000+ Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) operationalized in 722 districts across 35 states in India benefiting 1.1. Crore school children all over India. 60% of these ATLs are in government and government-aided schools. Tamil Nadu boasts of almost 1000+ ATL, which is one of the highest in India.  

• 72 Atal Incubation Centers (AIC) fostering over 3500+ Startups of which 1000+ are women-led Startups with 32,000+ jobs created. AICs have been set up at Chennai, Coimbatore, and Tiruppur districts of Tamil Nadu  

• 14 Atal Community Innovation Centers (ACIC) to spur community centric-innovations addressing rural India, Tier2, Tier3 city’s needs. 250+ startups have been supported through these. ACICs are operational at Virudhunagar and Kanyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu. 

• 24 Atal New India Challenge (With Government Ministries) & 15 Atal Research & Innovation for Small Enterprises {ARISE} (MSME challenge). 

• 40+ international and national partners including innovation collaborations with Australia, Sweden, Russia, Israel, Singapore, Denmark, USA & France.  

• Mentor India volunteer network with over 6200+ mentors, who are successful professionals from civil society including university professors, entrepreneurs, startup founders and industry professionals, have now been on boarded and associated as Mentors of Change (MoCs) on a pro-bono basis 

Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) 

• The Indian education system both tertiary and school education has been facing diverse challenges and gaps with respect to access, accreditation, employability, equity, faculty, funding, research, quality, innovation and creativity. It is imperative that the school education in India must be redefined with innovation to be able to plug these gaps. 

• The flagship program of AIM, the Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) is the one of the answers; a smart workspace of 1000-1500 square feet with state-of-the-art facilities & cutting-edge technologies meant for school children enrolled in schools from 6th standard to 12th standard.  

• ATL’s objective is to develop a culture of neoteric innovation in India. It enables democratization of innovation by facilitating access to technologies to the grassroots especially the children in government schools.   

• Tinkering lab activities are designed to spur the spark of problem-solving, curiosity, imagination & creativity, and go beyond regular curriculum and text book learning. Tinkering develops the aptitude to explore, experiment and learn. Tinkering refers to an attempt to inculcate the “Let’s Try Something New” attitude among students of all age groups with the help of technology.  

• ATL is equipped with cutting-edge equipment like robotics kits, sensors, IoT, 3D printer, miniaturized electronics, space technology, drone technology and other tools for tinkering, which are perhaps not seen even in majority of higher educational institutions and universities engaged in STEM education. 

• ATL promotes innovation independence as all the equipment and infrastructure in the lab is vendor-agnostic and schools have full freedom to procure equipment of their choice from any vendor subject to guidelines.   

• The ATL has a structured curriculum towards 21st century skills such as ideation, Computational Thinking, Design Thinking, 3D design & printing, Physical Computing (IoT & sensors), Robotics, electronics development tools & IPR. It is a 4 stage tinkering curriculum with adequate flexibility. And usually works with a monthly mentoring theme.  

• Other activities include competitions, seminars, workshops, tinker marathon, tinkerfest, community day with recognitions and rewards for the top performers like ATL school of the month, ATL wall of fame etc.   

• More than 16 lakhs+ student projects have been created as part of various regular ATL activities as also innovation challenges like ATL marathon, ATL tinkerfest etc.  

• ATL Marathon 2023-2024 edition, the national ATL innovation challenge, saw an amazing 19,500 ideation entries from school children pan-India. The theme have been very topical such as India’s G20 presidency, alignment of the nation’s challenges with the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). 

The ATL is no doubt a disruptive innovation which can equip students with tools needed to succeed in higher education and in the workplace like collaboration, team work, innovation, creativity, imagination, tinkering and presentation skills. No doubt, a stable, multi-stakeholder, scalable and foundational framework has been created by AIM through these ATLs.  The need of the hour is to scale up this ATL model of AIM to include every school in India.   

A fresh call for Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL) is expected soon subject to cabinet approval. So watch the space, https://aim.gov.in/ for more updates.   

Considering both the short and long-term benefits, all schools and their managements as well as principals and teachers need to be highly pro-active and enroll for this ATL program on a war footing as and when this next call for setting up ATL from AIM arises.  

Startups, entrepreneurs, industry & industry bodies such as CII, NASSCOM, Startup TN, ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu as well as universities and colleges can also render support this program by motivating their employees, faculty and members to enroll as mentors of change (MoC) for ATLs as also adopt the ATLs in their community and neighborhood and support them through collaboration, partnerships, funding, opportunities and mentoring.  

A cluster-based approach called ATL Sarthi is in progress on a pilot basis in five districts of the state of Tamil Nadu namely, Chennai, Coimbatore, Kanchipuram, Erode and Namakkal. As part of this, the schools are mentored to adopt best practices to run the ATLs, through co-learning, co-creating and co-adapting with the support of local authorities/organizations, known as ATL clusters. The local authorities can be the State Government, Private organizations, High performing school, Innovation councils in universities and colleges, NGOs, and civil society organizations. Interestingly, the Ministry of Education of Government of India has now mandated that every Institution’s Innovation Council (IIC) in all colleges and universities in India needs to adopt 5 ATLs each. The best performing as well as maximum number of IICs are in the state- of Tamil Nadu and most of these innovations councils are adopting the ATLs pan-India as well as leading the ATL Sarthi in their respective districts.  

Truly, sky is the limit for this ATL program.  

About the Author 

Dr. Prashant R. Nair, Head, Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, has over twenty-four years of academic and administrative experience. He has taught in academic programs in the USA and Europe at University of California, San Diego; Sofia University, Bulgaria and University of Trento, Italy as an Erasmus fellow. He has written 6 books, 2 edited books, 1 book chapter and over 50 publications in reputed journals, books and conferences. He is active as a science writer & columnist. He supports ATL activities in the state of Tamil Nadu as a Regional Mentor of Change, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) on a voluntary basis. He has been featured four times in the Gems of Mentor India publication of AIM as one of the top innovation mentors of change in India.  A very sought after speaker, by conservative estimates has addressed 150,000 students and trained 15,000+ faculty on technology, innovation, professional bodies and quality aspects of higher education in India, USA, Thailand, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Singapore, Nepal, Bhutan etc. Awards & recognitions won include multiple CSI best faculty and academic excellence awards, IEEE Education Society global chapter achievement award, IETE fellowship, Fulbright program reviewer, etc.