IMPacting Research INnovation and Technology (IMPRINT)-India has been launched in India to boost original scientific and technological research in the country. Notable points for Prelims are as follows:
- It is a joint initiative of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
- A Rs. 1000 Crore reserve fund has been kept at the disposal of an Inter-Ministerial Group comprising officials from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), Ministry of Defence, Department of Science & Technology, Department of Biotechnology, and the Ministry of Rural Development among others.
- It’s a single window mechanism
- 10 Focus areas are: Health care, information and communication technology, energy, sustainable habitat, nano-technology hardware, water resources and river systems, advanced materials, manufacturing, security and defence, and environmental science and climate change.
The research areas will also dovetail with the ‘Make in India’ campaign to boost domestic manufacturing.
Objective
The IMPacting Research INnovation and Technology (IMPRINT)-India, is aimed to develop a roadmap for research to solve major engineering and technology challenges in ten technology domains relevant to India.
Under the ‘Imprint India’ initiative, an Inter-Ministerial Group with Rs. 1000 crore corpus was formed. The group acts as a single-window mechanism to screen research projects and proposals by India’s leading research and technology institutes and allots funds for them.
The ministerial group included the Ministry of HRD, the Ministry of Defence, the Dept. of Science & Technology, the Dept. of Biotechnology, and the Ministry of Rural Development. The group will be a one-stop funding shop because many scientists and researchers conveyed how the bureaucracy was delaying projects and discouraging the institutes from starting them.
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the IISC were asked to identify the major areas where India is facing engineering and technology challenges. The Institutes have identified ten areas and have detailed the specifics of India’s technology requirements in each domain for the next few years.
The ten identified research areas are:
(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.