Important Facts For Prelims
Vigyan Jyoti Programme
- 11 Feb 2022
- 3 min read
Why in News?
Recently, the Vigyan Jyoti programme was extended to 100 districts in its 2nd phase. Vigyan Jyoti Programme was launched by the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Ministry of Science and Technology.
- Further, DST is working proactively to bring gender parity in Science & Technology (S&T) domain through various women-centric programmes.
What are Highlights of the Vigyan Jyoti Programme?
- It aims to address the underrepresentation of women in different fields of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in the country..
- As a first step, the “Vigyan Jyoti” has been introduced in the year 2019-20 at the school level wherein meritorious girl students of Class 9-12 are being encouraged to pursue higher education and career in STEM field.
- The Vigyan Jyoti envisaged hand-holding and interventions right from the school level i.e., Class IX and which will continue till the PhD level to encourage girls to pursue a career in underrepresented areas of STEM.
- The Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS), an autonomous organization of the Ministry of Education, is the implementation partner of Vigyan Jyoti. NVS has a network of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) in more than 600 districts of India.
What are Other Related Government Initiatives?
- Women Scientists Scheme: To help women with career-breaks.
- Indo-US Fellowship for Women in STEMM (WISTEMM) program: Women scientists can work in research labs in the US.
- Consolidation of University Research for Innovation and Excellence in Women Universities (CURIE) programme: Improving R&D infrastructure and establishing state-of-the-art research facilities in order to create excellence in S&T in women universities.
- Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) program: To develop a comprehensive Charter and a framework for assessing Gender Equality in STEM.
- The New Education Policy and the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy could make use of the demographic dividend to progress long in short time to help increase the number of women in science.
- Further, DST has also additionally established Artificial Intelligence (AI) labs in women universities with the goal to foster AI innovations and to prepare skilled manpower for AI-based jobs in future.
