Express News Service By

NEW DELHI: The Government of India has decided to leverage the research potential of the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to meet industry demands for innovative solutions to maintain their global competitiveness.

It has created a corpus of Rs 250 crore annually with an aim of giving an impetus to the ‘Make In India’ campaign but under a rider that the research has to have a ‘clearly defined outcome’.

“The proposal also seeks to foster academia-industry linkages in carrying out “high-end research” and promote innovations in higher educational institutes,” said an official in the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry.

The proposal will have to abide by a specific timeframe and projects worth Rs 500 crore and above will be taken up by the IITs, where the industry could chip in with 25 per cent of the project cost and a matching contribution could come from the Department of Science and Technology, the official elaborated.

The broader contours of the programme are expected to be deliberated during the three-day Visitors conference chaired by President Pranab Mukherjee in the national capital from November 4. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who launched the Make In India initiative to boost industry in the country in September last year, will attend the meet.

The aim is to involve the IITs in the Make In India campaign and explore their research potential, the HRD Ministry official said. The IIT Council, the governing body of all IITs, will be the coordinating agency for all the projects. The council will be mandated to reach out the industry popularising the promoting the partnership with the IITs.

“One of the objectives of the council will be highlighting the potential of individual IITs and the departments that have given these institutes their fame,” the official said.

IIT Bombay, for example, is popular for its aerospace programme and is known the world over for its prowess in the discipline. Similarly, IIT Kanpur has created a reputation for itself in computer science.

The scheme would initially be limited to the IITs and could be expanded to the other centrally-funded technical institutes.

At the Visitors conference, vice chancellors of central universities and directors from NITs, IITs, IISERs and IISC would be in attendence apart from the heads of IIT.