INSPIRE & innovation programmes

Story hook

In 2008, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) counted the number of Indian school students choosing a science stream after Class 10. It was alarmingly low — a country of 1.2 billion was producing fewer science majors per capita than Bangladesh. The reason wasn't ability. It was money. A science laboratory needs equipment, a basic-research career needs years of patience, and most middle-class families pushed their children toward engineering or medicine — careers that paid back the loan.

Manmohan Singh's government wanted to rebuild the science pipeline from the bottom up. The instrument was a scheme with an unusual name: INSPIRE — Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research. The idea was to catch students early — Class 6, Class 12, undergraduate — and shower them with awards, internships, fellowships, and faculty positions as they grew up in the system.

Eighteen years later, INSPIRE has handed out over 2 million school-level awards, supported 80,000 scholars, and produced hundreds of returning Faculty fellows who run their own labs. Around it, DST has built an architecture of innovation programmes — Manak, SHE, AORC, Faculty, Atal Innovation Mission, NIDHI, NM-ICPS — that together represent India's largest sustained investment in early-stage research talent. This is that ecosystem.

Why this matters for UPSC

DST schemes are a regular Prelims feature — almost every year asks about INSPIRE, AIM, NIDHI, or a recent DST initiative. The Mains relevance is broader: science policy, R&D financing, and brain-drain reversal questions all map onto these programmes. The Interview probes test whether candidates know what they would fund if they ran the Department.