INSPIRE Awards

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Recently, the 8th National Level Exhibition and Project Competition (NLEPC) for the INSPIRE Awards – MANAK (Million Minds Augmenting National Aspiration and Knowledge) has commenced, which showcased the innovative ideas from 581 students representing various States and UT’s of the country.

The INSPIRE Awards – MANAK scheme is aligned with the ‘Start-up India’ initiative.
It is implemented by DST (Department of Science and Technology) with National Innovation Foundation – India (NIF), an autonomous body of DST.
It disburses 10,000 into the bank account of the winning students through Direct Benefit Transfer scheme.
It does not believe in conducting competitive exams for identification of talent at any level, rather, it believes in efficacy of the existing educational structure for identification of talent.
It aims to motivate students in the age group of 10-15 years and studying in classes 6 to 10 to become future innovators and critical thinkers.
It believes that once the original ideas and innovations rooted in Science and Technology by students get incubated, it will foster a culture of creativity and innovative thinking among school children.
It will help address the societal needs through science and technology and nurture them to become sensitive and responsible citizens and innovation leaders of tomorrow.

The objective of the scheme is to target one million original ideas/innovations rooted in science and societal applications to foster a culture of creativity and innovative thinking among school children.

Innovation of Science Pursuit for Inspire Research (INSPIRE) was announced in 2008 in the 11^th Five Year Plans.
The basic objective of INSPIRE would be to communicate to the youth population of the country the excitements of creative pursuit of science and attract talent to the study of science at an early stage and build the required critical human resource pool for strengthening and expanding the Science & Technology system and R&D base.
INSPIRE Scheme has included three programs and five components. They are i) Scheme for Early Attraction of Talents for Science (SEATS), b) Scholarship for Higher Education (SHE) and c) Assured Opportunity for Research Careers (AORC).