J&K - first to establish Atal Tinkering Labs in partnership with NITI Aayog

By Shailesh Yadav
New Delhi [India], August 25 : The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has become the first amongst States/UTs to establish an Atal Tinkering Lab in partnership with the government think tank NITI Aayog.
NITI Aayog is keen to replicate the J&K model of Atal Tinkering Lab to rest of the country on 50:50 cost sharing basis.
An Atal Tinkering Lab provides a space where young minds can give shape to their ideas through hands on do-it-yourself mode and learn innovation skills. To foster entrepreneurship and innovation, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog has established over 10000 ATLs across the country so far enabling over 3 Million+ students between Grade VI to Grade XII acquire a problem solving, tinkering and innovative mindset.
The aim is to encourage young minds in the field, and challenge students to become producers of products themselves instead of consumers
Those states who want to build such infrastructure and wish not to be dependent on central budgets may opt for the J&K model, said Chintan Vaishnav, Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog in an exclusive interview to ANI.
Vaishnav said that an Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is establishing more 500 labs in J&K schools in next few years to promote innovative and creative mindset among J&K students.
"We signed an agreement with 50:50 cost sharing basis to establish 500 ATL within two years. As per MoU signed between AIM and J&K UT both will provide rupees 10 lakh each to establish ATLs in UT. One ATL cost Rs 20 Lakh provided by AIM. For the first time in Jammu and Kashmir, that money is being cost is being shared by this Union Territory and the central government."
The Mission Director further said that it is entirely for the states that are willing to move quickly and build such ATL infrastructure for their schools.
ATL was started with an aim to build 10,000 labs and the target has been achieved last month.
"So we came up with this unique scheme which was well taken by J&K. We will build about 250 ATL in Jammu region and 250 in Kashmir region. The idea is that about 500 labs will be built in partnership between the J&K and the Central Government. It is time we replicate such a model as fast as possible in other states. it's very desirable that some of these lessons from J&K can be taken to other states."
Vaishnav said that "there are several unique aspects to J&K model, which we have not seen in rest of the country."
"They were all built with money that was given by Niti Aayog to the school to build such an infrastructure.The idea behind cost sharing was to not make such raising of funds from the central government a bottleneck in building this infrastructure quickly. If tinkering labs are useful to school students then why not to make them available as fast as possible. Another aspect is that we are now allowing schools to apply as a cluster so where a school can say that I am more worthy of given ATL because I will also work with my neighboring schools, and provide them access."
"We have two lakh sixty thousand schools and we have so far only built 10,000 ATLs. And if we want such facilities to be available to students quickly, instead of building it in every school, which will take a very long time, it will be better to provide access to such labs via such a cluster type of a model, so I think that's very unique to J&K and would become a model for the country," the mission director said.
Vaishnav said J&K for the first time is trying to integrate the ATL with some of the schemes of the Department of Education that are being run in the UT.
"We want to take this creative and innovative movement to all schools and provide these creative minds a platform to perform and showcase their talent," said Vaishnav.