‘Allocate 1% profit for research, start-ups’

NITI AAYOG PANEL WANTS CURRICULUM CHANGE IN SCHOOLS TO MAKE INNOVATION CENTRAL TO EDUCATION

NEW DELHI: A National Institution for Transforming India (Niti) Aayog panel on the Atal Innovation Mission wants companies to allocate 1% of their profit for research by universities and to fund start-ups.

Recommending a different approach to foster innovation and research in India, the panel wants the government to have annual innovation competitions where winners will get dedicated funding to take their ideas to the market.

Government sources said the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has asked ministries to examine the recommendations while framing a new manufacturing policy for the 2016-17 budget.

A target of `200 crore per year should be set for public investment in incubators in the initial years, the panel dominated by experts from the private sector said, asking the government to scale up funding.

It has suggested a slew of funding measures, including corporates dedicating 1% of their profit to start-ups and incubators and also funding innovative research in universities.

The panel said all contracts with foreign defence companies above $5 billion should include a clause for 5% of the contract value to be directed to establish research centric universities with strong emphasis on its core product areas.

The panel added that a large number of incubators to be set up should be ranked on annual basis according to “stringent” guidelines, with non-performers phased out. It wants curriculum change in schools to make innovation central to education and make annual assessment of the learning ability of teachers and students mandatory.

The committee said a slew of changes were needed since India had been laggard in innovation with only 40,000 new jobs created through incubators since 1982.

To show how India fared globally, the panel said, the Global Innovation Index 2014 ranks the country the lowest among all the BRIC nations. It also lambasted the Indian education system for creating a bias against new ideas and innovators.

Indian entrepreneurs struggle four to five times more to raise money as compared to their American counterparts and the difficulty increases manifold if the entrepreneur is from the deprived sections or a woman, the panel said, quoting two recent surveys.