Former President APJ Abdul Kalam launched Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan — An initiative to inculcate Scientific Temper among Children

With an objective to inculcate scientific temper, spirit of inquiry, creativity and love for science and mathematics in school children, former president of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam launched the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan (RAA) on July 9, in New Delhi. While launching the abhiyan, Dr. Kalam focused on developing the spirit of innovation and experimentation among students and said that the entire abhiyan can work successfully only if four qualities of uniqueness are preserved, namely, great aim, quest of knowledge, hard work and perseverance. Emphasising the value of learning he added “we learn to live, we learn to think and we learn to learn”. He concluded his speech by stressing upon attaching highest value to Science.

During the launch, Smt. Smriti Irani, Union Minister for Human Resource Development addressed the gathering through video conferencing and highlighted the fact that RAA is an initiative by Ministry of HRD to encourage students to learn sciences beyond the classrooms. She said, “Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan is an effort to take forward the Prime Minister’s vision of Digital India, ‘Make in India’ and ‘Teach in India’ “.

Smriti Irani also mentioned Google India’s initiative of Code to Learn Contest which will enable students to learn in the Google campus. She announced that the Phase II of RAA will be launched in January, 2016 for higher education under which model science labs will be established in all districts of the North Eastern States.

During the event, two students, Ms. Jaya and Mr. Arsh winners of Initiative for Research and Innovation (IRIS) Award, 2014 & 2015, shared their innovative projects and their journey through the wondrous world of science. A play was presented by students of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow spread the message of how science is woven in every aspect of life and is not limited to classrooms.

Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan is a unique concept developed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development that aims to inculcate a spirit of inquiry, creativity and love for Science and Mathematics in school children. The aim is to provide nourishing and nurturing support to and a platform for schools in a dual track approach to make Science, Mathematics and Technology exciting to children.

The main objectives of the entire Abhiyaan are:

• To enable children to become motivated and engaged in Science, Mathematics and Technology (SMT) through observation, experimentation, inference drawing, model building, rational reasoning, testability etc.
• To create curiosity, excitement and exploration among school children in Science, Mathematics and Technology.
• To create a culture of thinking, inventing, tinkering and doing to promote enquiry based learning in Schools.
• To achieve learning levels appropriate to the class of study in Science and Mathematics.
• To encourage and nurture schools to be incubators of Innovation.