NITI Ayog to establish 500 ATLs across JK

Srinagar, Aug 26: To nurture the innovative mind-set among high school students across the length and breadth of J&K, Atal Innovation Mission and NITI Ayog is establishing more than 500 Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs) here under Atal Innovation Mission (AIM).
ATL is the flagship initiative of AIM launched by Government of India, to nurture an innovative mindset amongst high school students across the length and breadth of India. Government of India is working on a five-year vision document for AIM to create and promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship across the length and breadth of the country.
ATL is a workspace where young minds can give shape to their ideas through hands-on do-it-yourself mode and learn innovation skills. The objectives of the AIM are to create and promote an ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country via interventions at school, university, research institutions, MSME and industry levels.
The programmes of AIM cover 34 states and Union Territories with the goal of leveraging India’s demographic dividend by inspiring greater participation in the innovation ecosystem.
Recently AIM Team led by Mission Director, Dr Chintan Vaishnav inspected the Atal Tinkering Labs in J&K during which creative students displayed their innovative models and briefed about challenges they faced while working on these innovations.
On the occasion, the MD said that Atal team has created over 10k Tinkering Labs all over India and hundreds of these have been also established in J&K schools.
He said the AIM is establishing more than 500 labs in J&K schools in the next few years to promote innovative and creative mind-set among J&K students. “We want to take this creative and innovative movement to all schools and provide these creative minds a platform to perform and showcase their talent”, He added.
He said the aim is to encourage young minds in the field, and challenge students to become producers of products themselves instead of consumers.
Government has directed School Education Department to promote scientific temper among the students in areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence by proactively engaging them in various experiments and scientific activities.
They have also been asked to fix timelines for setting up the laboratories and to emphasise on nomination of trainers or champions to run the labs against suitable incentives.