SWATI PORTAL

Why in News?                                                                                                        

Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India Prof Ajay Kumar Sood launched “Science for Women-A Technology & Innovation (SWATI)” Portal, aimed at creating a single online portal representing Indian Women and Girls in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics & Medicine).

What is SWATI Portal?

• The Portal is a complete interactive database; and the first-of-its-kind in India which is developed, hosted and maintained by the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi under the leadership of Dr. Subhra Chakraborty, Director, NIPGR, New Delhi.
• Dr Chakraborty in her address highlighted this aspect and said that this probably world’s first Interactive Portal of its kind. She also quoted figures of 2021 UN Report to highlight the under representation of women across all sectors. Dr Chakraborty reiterated that this is a dynamically growing portal and the endeavour is to have data of all women scientists of the country included.
• The other objectives of the SWATI Portal include to scale up the effort exponentially to include each and every Indian woman in science, across all career stages and subjects, spanning both Academia and the Industry enabling reliable and statistically significant long term research on the issues of equality, diversity and inclusivity in India; Inclusion of each and every Indian WiS, career stages, subjects, spanning both Academia and the Industry; Enabling reliable and statistically significant long term research on the issues of equality, diversity and inclusivity in India, developing active search engine and searchable database (Name, Affiliation, Area of Interest).
• The various Sections in the portal include Icons – Awardees (Padma / Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar / Stree Shakti Science Samman) & Directors, Secretaries Academy Presidents; Faculty- Indian Universities, Autonomous organizations including S&T Ministry/ CSIR/ DBT/ DST/ CSIR/ MHRD/ UGC/ GATI/ KIRAN; Research fellows- Post docs, JRFs, SRFs, technical Staff; Students-PhD Scholars, Research Interns, Graduates, Post graduates, Undergraduates; WiS Entrepreneurs, Startups, Business & Science Administrators; STEMM background professionals in alternate careers(e.g. Science, Journalism etc).So far, 3000 ‘WiS Data Cards’ have been incorporated.