India was known as 'vishwa guru', must regain its intellectual leadership: Naidu

New Delhi: India must regain its intellectual leadership and once again emerge as a global hub of learning and innovation, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said on Tuesday.

"Innovation has always been key defining feature of human progress. India has its own illustrious history of innovations spanning at least 20 centuries right from the invention of 'zero' and the decimal system. India was known as the 'vishwa guru'. "We must regain that intellectual leadership, we must again emerge as a global hub of learning and innovation," he said. "We have highly talented youths brimming with new ideas, with a passion for implementation and willingness to forge a new path. The youth will define our country's future. They need encouragement, facilitation and recognition, they must be given needed guidance and freedom to explore new frontiers," Naidu said while releasing the Atal Rankings of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA).

Noting that innovation should become a people's movement, the vice president said that concerted efforts are needed to make students out-of-the-box thinkers. "There should be concerted efforts to inculcate the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among our students to make them out-of-the-box thinkers, creative problem solvers, entrepreneurs and job creators than job seekers," he added.

IIT Madras retained the top rank in the Institute of National Importance index under the ARIIA ranking 2020. IIT-Madras is followed by IIT-Bombay and IIT-Delhi. At ranks 4 and 5 are IISc and IIT-Kharagpur, respectively. ARIIA is an initiative of the Ministry of Education to systematically rank higher education institutions and universities in India on indicators related to innovation. This year, the ranking had a special category for women only higher educational institutions. The other five categories are — centrally funded institutions, state-funded universities, state-funded autonomous institutions, deemed universities and private institutions.

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