Role of Indian Higher Education Institutions towards Aatmanirbhar India: Government Policies and Initiatives to promote Entrepreneurship and Innovation

The Prime Minister of India in 2020 announced his vision of Aatmanirbhar India to make India an economically self-reliant nation. He shared this vision while announcing the 1st economic package to support the Indian population during the COVID19 pandemic. He believed Aatmanirbhar India could be achieved through pursuing policies that are competent, efficient, and resilient along with being self-generating and self-sustaining. This vision was well aligned and would contribute significantly to India's plan of becoming a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025. However, achieving this vision would have required systemic changes in India's DNA as a larger section of the India population needed to become Innovators and Entrepreneurs. One element of adapting to this new DNA was envisioned through the development of innovation and entrepreneurial mindset among the youth of the country. It was important to capitalize on the potential of the young minds and awaken the innovators among the students in K-12 and especially higher education. In the last 3 years, the Ministry of Education (previously Ministry of Human Resource Development) along with other central organizations such as the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), UGC (University Grants Commission) etc have come up with a range of policies and initiatives, all strategically aligned to foster an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and innovation (I&E) in higher education institutions (HEIs). In this paper, we highlight a set of initiatives and policies launched up by the government of India to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in HEI's. We elaborate on the National Startup and Innovation Policy, New Education Policy (NEP) along with national initiatives such as Smart India Hackathon, ARIAA (National I&E ranking) and others. Case-studies are presented of noteworthy HEI's who have transformed themselves by using the government's efforts as catalysts to nurture I&E. At the end, we highlight the potential of HEI's in India to collectively contribute to helping India become Aatmanirbhar (self-reliant) in the post-Pandemic world.