KIRAN Scheme
The Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through
Nurturing (KIRAN) Scheme is one of the several pioneering initiatives
started by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) for
promoting women in science.
Key Points
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) is
implementing ‘Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement
through Nurturing (KIRAN)’ Scheme to provide various career
opportunities to women scientists and technologists.
It is primarily aimed to bring gender parity in the Science &
Technology sector by inducting more women talent in the research &
development domain through various programmes.
It also provides fellowship support ranging from Rs 25000 to
55000 to women ranging in the age group 27 to 57 years for
continuing higher education in Science and Technology after a break
in career.
NIDHI
NIDHI (National Initiative for Development and Harnessing Innovations),
an umbrella program is pioneered by the Department of Science &
Technology (DST), Government of India, for nurturing ideas and
innovations (knowledge-based and technology-driven) into successful
startups.NIDHI supports start ups from the ideation stage to the
marketing stage.
INSPIRE Programme
"Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE)" is an
innovative programme sponsored and managed by the Department of
Science & Technology for attraction of talent to Science. The basic
objective of INSPIRE is to communicate to the youth of the country the
excitements of creative pursuit of science, attract talent to the study of
science at an early age and thus build the required critical human resource
pool for strengthening and expanding the Science & Technology system
and R & D base.
A striking feature of the programme is that it does not believe in
conducting competitive exams for identification of talent at any level. It
believes in and relies on the efficacy of the existing educational structure
for identification of talent.
PRAGATI
PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation), as the
name suggests, is aimed at starting a culture of Pro-Active Governance
and Timely Implementation. It is also a robust system for bringing e-
transparency and e-accountability with real-time presence and exchange
among the key stakeholders. The platform was launched on March 25,
2015.
It is a multi-purpose and multi-modal platform that is aimed at addressing
common man’s grievances, and simultaneously monitoring and reviewing
important programmes and projects of the Government of India as well as
projects flagged by State Governments.
The PRAGATI platform uniquely bundles three latest technologies:
Digital data management, video-conferencing and geo-spatial technology.
It also offers a unique combination in the direction of cooperative
federalism since it brings on one stage the Secretaries of Government of
India and the Chief Secretaries of the States. With this, the Prime
Minister is able to discuss the issues with the concerned Central and State
officials with full information and latest visuals of the ground level
situation.
SWAYAM
SWAYAM MOOCs platform is World’s Largest Online Free E-Learning
Platform Portal designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of
Education Policy viz., Access, Equity and Quality by covering
School/Vocational, Under-Graduate, Post Graduate, Engineering and
Other Professional Courses.
SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring
Minds) MOOC Platform was developed indigenously by AICTE in
2016 to facilitate hosting of online courses which could be accessed
by anyone, anywhere at any time free of cost to achieve three cardinal
principles of Education Policy viz. access, equity and quality.
SWAYAM as one of the World’s biggest Massive Open Online
Courses (MOOCs) integrated platform of free online courses, cover
subjects from high school onwards till higher education including
Skill based courses to ensure that every student benefit from learning
material through ICT.
The courses hosted on SWAYAM are in 4 quadrants – (1) video
lectures, (2)specially prepared reading material that can be
downloaded/printed (3) self-assessment tests through tests and quizzes
and (4) an online discussion forum for clearing the doubts. Steps have
been taken to enrich the learning experience by using audio-video and
multimedia and state of the art pedagogy/ technology.
