Entrepreneurial track of Indian I.I.T. Mumbai – A roadmap for higher education institutions in Marathwada for their quest of finding the “new quality paradigm for higher education”

This paper takes a bird‟s view of the historical and social background of Marathwada*, under which the local economy was grown so far. Despite of this upward trend in the economy, this region has constantly termed as one of the most backward regions in the country and subsequently the local population got least benefitted. This paved the way for realization of need and a subsequent rapid horizontal growth of education and specially the technical and scientific higher education. In any part of the world, the natives got benefitted only when they have direct engagement with the economic and industrial activities around them. Of late, it was started getting realized that locals can only be associated with the economic engine of the region by their entrepreneurial and intellectual contributions. Centers of higher technical & scientific educations can play a crucial role for facilitating and providing an ambience for hatching ideas, economic activities and intellectual property to reinforce the local economy. IIT Mumbai has established itself as an ideal place for nurturing, developing and transferring the aforesaid precious intellectual property. With the far-sighted policies and their timely implementing has made this institution as an ideal place for technology creation and transfer, not only considered in India but recognized globally as well. This paper has tried to enumerate the crucial stages crossed and policy decisions taken in this evolutionary journey of IIT Mumbai to get transformed into an entrepreneurial educational hub. Off late in Marathwada along with in other parts of the country, a realization has got ground that till the time its institutions of higher education do not embark upon grooming this entrepreneurial ability, the economic and social consolidation of economic activities and making its benefits reaching to the local population cannot take place. This paper offers a roadmap as to how an institution of higher technical education can be transformed into a pivot for creating and transferring the intellectual properties and running the entrepreneurial activities based thereon.

* Central Maharashtra Region in India