Education, Research and Development is increasingly being influenced by production, trade and consumption environment for different varied goods and services. The overall priorities of this sector is to increase the productivity and to enhance diversification and value addition. This would provide real equity and livelihood security on one hand and ease of creating efficient value chain on other. This endeavour would essentially require an innovation system centric policy.
Discussion on New Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP) was initiated during mid-2020. For India to march ahead on a sustainable development pathway to include economic development, social inclusion and environmental sustainability for achieving an “Atmanirbhar Bharat”. The emergence of disruptive and impactful technologies poses new challenges and simultaneously greater opportunities. The new Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy aims to bring about profound changes through short-term, medium-term, and long-term mission mode projects by building a nurtured ecosystem that promotes research and innovation(dst.gov.in).
Despite India’ s proven dominance in Science and technology-related fields on a global scale, the country has consistently been plagued by disparity in the economic status among its people. India’s technical professionals have taken the country to the position of a global R & D hub, there is a large pool of semi-skilled and unskilled workforce in various sectors. Indian policy makers are faced with the magnanimous task of balancing the aspirations of the skilled and talented with the basic needs of those at the bottom of the pyramid.
Different departments like Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of HRD, Department of Industrial Production and Policy, All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) etc came up with a start-up policy guided by the start-up policy of Government of India 2016 to integrate science, technology and innovation with mainstream socio-economic development policy of India, where income and employment generation through the start-ups are given emphasis.
This has resulted in setting up of Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) in academic institutions, research institutions to nourish and promote these ventures through incubation. The process is aimed at enabling individual and group level technology ventures to contribute towards wealth creation and new job creation in their regions. In the new National Innovation and Startup Policy 2019 guided by New Education Policy and start-up India Policy for students and faculties of Higher Educational Institutions were prepared. Therefore DDU GU has joined this march and created this policy.
The major thought process that went into the development of this policy document on start-ups is due to the fact that in Eastern UP, the need to maintain technological parity with global competitors is a critical issue in all spheres of economic activities. Emerging technologies, which can enhance technological outputs and also benefit communities, will then become more acceptable. The need for instruments such as TBI has been recognized for initiating technology led and knowledge driven enterprises. Studies also show that such mechanisms help not only in the growth of technology based new enterprises but also in improving their survival rate substantially (from 30 per cent to over 70 per cent). TBIs also facilitate speedy commercialization of research outputs. Thus, the TBIs besides providing a host of services to new enterprises (and also to existing SMEs in the region) also facilitate an atmosphere congenial for their survival and growth. The essential feature of this TBI programme is that the tenant companies leave the incubator space within 2-3 years.