At the official launch of Institutions Innovation Cell and the announcement of Smart India Hackathon at the MGM College of Engineering & Technology, Ernakulam, NowNext got an opportunity to ask few important questions to Mr Ramesh Unnikrishnan, Director of AICTE. We have prepared an interview report based on the valuable facts stated by him on various topics around technical education and the educational values of the country.

Q) Is there any other activities by AICTE to promote student entrepreneurship ideas?

At AICTE, we have 5 different departments. One of them is known as RIFD bureau. This department’s major activities including arranging proper funding to the institutions. Yearly two times we will publish the advertisement for the colleges to apply for the funding opportunities. In the evaluation process, we don’t consider any other factors including the college name and its popularity. We strictly focus on the ideas that they are introducing. The technical team will examine the application and they will finalize the list of eligible institutes. If the ideas are good, we will directly give funds to the institutes. We spend over 500cr each year exclusively for this project.

It includes the funds for Entrepreneurship development cell, Industry institute interaction cell, seminars, faculty development programs, exhibitions, hostels and over 26 schemes. We have sanctioned total 18 hostels for socially backward students across the country. I am proud to tell you that the 6 of the total 18 is in Kerala. That’s a very good achievement. There are many schemes like that. But still, in everyone’s mind, AICTE is a committee to provide accreditation for the colleges. People are still unaware of the activities of AICTE. Even I didn’t know about them until I join AICTE.

We have recently sponsored 20 teams with 5 girls in each team from India to Canada for a women entrepreneurship program. After that, the Singapore government contacted us to conduct a similar model of the Smart India Hackathon in their country too.

In this era, everyone is self-centric and don’t care about society and public issues. With the Smart India Hackathon, AICTE is aiming to disperse from that system.

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