Access to Knowledge for Technology Development and Dissemination (A2K+)(A2K)

Overview

About A2K

Access to Knowledge for Technology Development and Dissemination, written A2K+, sits in India's scholarship listings and is not a scholarship. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) pays an organisation to run a study, a conference or a hackathon, and the online form asks for that organisation's bank account, its year of establishment and the number of technically qualified people it employs full time, as the Service Plus form fields for A2K+ Studies set out. A student has nothing to enter on that form.

What does reach a student is the event the grant paid for and the report it produced, and both are free. Whether that is worth anything depends on which A2K+ component is paying.

A2K+ is DSIR's channel for moving technology information outward, to industry, to research and academic institutions, to consultants and to government departments. DSIR sits under the Ministry of Science and Technology and its own mandate is indigenous technology promotion, development, utilisation and transfer, which the department restates in the compendium it publishes of A2K+ Studies findings.

The scheme page DSIR maintains for A2K+ carries guidelines and a working application route for three components. A2K+ Studies buys analytical work: technology status and foresight studies, sectoral and cluster reports, and compendiums of publicly funded technologies that are close to market. A2K+ Events buys the room: workshops, training programmes, exhibitions, stakeholder consultations, hackathons and virtual events on industrial research and innovation. The Technology Development and Utilization Programme for Women is the third, with its own guidelines document and its own form.

Aggregator listings name a fourth, the Technology Development and Demonstration Programme. Read the department's own archived description of it and the word that matters is spilling over: TDDP sat in A2K+ only as continuing support to projects carried in from the 11th five year plan, and the page DSIR serves now has dropped it. There is no form behind that name.

The Studies component has been running since 2014, and DSIR's own compendium of its findings covers the studies of the four years before publication rather than the whole run.

How the study topics are chosen is worth knowing before you draft anything. DSIR has approached 65 ministries and departments and collected 103 problem statements from them, the department records, so the advertised themes come out of that exchange rather than from an open call for ideas.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

A2K+ Events runs on a standing annual calendar rather than an advertised call, and the window you submit in determines both when your proposal is heard and how far ahead your event may be scheduled.

A2K+ Studies works the other way. DSIR advertises theme areas and invites proposals against them, so there is a date only while a call is live. The most recent one, Advertisement No. A2KS-15011/1/2023-IRD-DSIR, named five study topics and closed on 20/10/2023.

That date is the second one the same notice carried. Compare it with the first issue of the identical advertisement, which prints 20/09/2023 against the same five topics and the same number: DSIR reissued the file a month on with the later date and changed nothing else. Worth knowing when the next call appears, though nothing in the guidelines promises the department will do it again.

Those five topics are still on DSIR's A2K+ page, under a heading calling it the last call for proposals and with the invitation written in the past tense. So a study proposal is waiting on an advertisement number nobody has issued yet. An events organiser is in the opposite position: the September to December window is the one currently taking proposals, and a form filed inside it is read at the January committee, for an event dated April onwards.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Five kinds of body can apply, and the list is the same for Studies and for Events: industry associations and chambers of commerce, central and state government departments and their associated bodies, national R&D institutions and DSIR-recognised SIROs and registered PFRIs, UGC or AICTE approved universities and colleges, and any institution that holds a distinct legal entity under Rule 228 of GFR 2017, per the A2K+ Studies guidelines.

What the myScheme record does not say is what "distinct legal entity" costs you in paperwork. The Service Plus form makes the applicant declare a legal status twice over, first public or private, then society, trust, Section 8 company or other, so a department that has never been registered in its own name applies through the body that was.

A not-for-profit organiser applying for an event has to enclose its registration certificate, its memorandum of association and bye-laws, audited statements of accounts for the previous three years, and its latest annual report with the list of elected members. The A2K+ Events proforma also settles the case of a local chapter: unless it is separately registered it must apply through its registered parent body, and any grant is released only in favour of that registered body.

An academic institute is asked for its letter of affiliation or recognition from the regulator, whether that is UGC, AICTE or the parent central or state university. And whoever writes the proposal, the signature that matters belongs to the head of the institution. A studies application is routed through the head of the institute, and an events application must be counter-signed by the head or it will not be entertained.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

The bans are specific rather than categorical, and each one is written into the component's own guidelines.

Under Studies, DSIR will not pay for international travel on a project, and it grants nothing towards setting up general purpose infrastructural facilities. A proposal also has to sit on an advertised theme area, so an unsolicited study on a subject DSIR has not advertised has nowhere to go.

Under Events, the sector list is drawn from Make in India and one sector is struck out of it by name: tourism and hospitality are excluded, per the A2K+ Events guidelines.

Volume is capped as well. For each Studies call only one proposal is accepted from an applicant organisation, and not more than two proposals from a single agency are supported in a financial year. The Events guidelines allow up to three supported proposals per agency per financial year.

The declaration at the foot of the A2K+ Studies application format closes the last door. The signatory states that no financial assistance for the same proposal has been received from or applied for with any other agency, and that a false statement cancels the proposal and forfeits every claim under it.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing about A2K+ is designed to run a second term. A study is sanctioned for a period of not more than one year, and the guidelines set out no extension, no second tranche and no route to convert a finished study into a continuing one.

Two clauses harden that. Money must be spent under the approved head without shifting it from one activity to another, and anything unspent goes back to the Government of India. If the work costs more than was sanctioned, the organisation carries the difference and DSIR makes no further money available.

Manpower is treated the same way. DSIR support towards manpower expenses stays fixed even if fellowship rates change during the project, so a mid-project revision in stipend norms does not reopen the sanction.

An organisation that wants to work on A2K+ again submits a fresh proposal against a later advertised theme, inside the per-year caps above.

What you get

Award & benefits

DSIR does not publish a maximum grant for either A2K+ Studies or A2K+ Events. The guidelines and the application formats currently on the DSIR site list the heads of expenditure that are permissible and then ask the applicant to enter its own item-wise budget with a justification against each line, which the Technical Advisory Committee then works on.

The overheads line deserves a second look, because it is the only percentage the Studies guidelines fix. Overhead charges are set there at 15%, and the Service Plus budget table carries overhead as its own sub-head alongside manpower, travel, consultation fees and contingency.

Neither guidelines document prints a revision date on its face, so the honest vintage of that percentage is the file DSIR is serving today from its A2K+ scheme page. Anyone budgeting a proposal should re-download it before signing the form rather than working from a copy saved earlier.

For an event, "partial" is enforced arithmetically rather than left as a word. The organiser has to report what the event actually spent and what it earned from every source, registration and advertisement and co-sponsors included. A shortfall is the applicant agency's to cover, and any surplus revenue is deducted from what DSIR pays.

• The support shall be towards the following items of expenditure: Travel for networking, survey, stakeholder meetings, experts, resource persons, etc; (International travel is not permissible under a project).
• Consultation fees for experts and resource persons.
• Contingencies and consumables (Consumables may include research equipment essential for the study and approved by TAC)
• Overhead charges are fixed at 15%.
• Any other item upon recommendation by the TAC and approval of the competent authority.
• Note: DSIR support towards manpower expenses shall remain fixed respective of changes in fellowship rates if any.
• No support is granted for setting up general-purpose infrastructural facilities.

What to prepare

Documents required

The Studies application is built around the principal investigator. It carries the PI's CV as a required upload, the co-PI's details where there is one, and separate uploads for objectives, scope, methodology, the approach with its targets and deliverables, and the budget justification.

The Events application front-loads the organisation instead: bank account holder name, account type and number, IFSC code and branch address, the expected number of participants, and the head of institution's own email address. Attachments have to be PDF for events, while the Studies service also accepts JPG.

Some event paperwork can follow later. The proforma allows the organising committee list, the keynote speaker and resource person list, the brochure and the detailed session schedule to be submitted after the application itself goes in.

Step by step

How to apply

Both components run through Service Plus, the government's common application platform, at serviceonline.gov.in/dbt. The organisation registers there in its own name, logs in, then reaches the form through Apply for Services, View all Available services, and the service named Studies or Events Programme.

For a study there is one more step. The 2023 Studies advertisement asked applicants to register on the portal and submit there, and then to email the A2K+ head a soft copy of the proposal as an MS Word file, expressly not a PDF. Neither the Studies route nor the Events route asks for anything on paper. The line about a signed hard copy going by speed post, which sits a screen higher on the same DSIR page, belongs to the women's component and its separate submission.

Anyone reworking a proposal file left over from an old attempt should throw the old packing list away. An earlier call DSIR still archives wanted five signed hard copies, a pen drive and an emailed Word file, all addressed to the Head of A2K+ with "CONFIDENTIAL, A2K+ Studies" super-scribed on the document holder. None of that survives the move to Service Plus.

The App Ref No. and What It Unlocks

Submission produces an acknowledgement receipt carrying an Application Reference Number, and that number is the only handle the applicant gets. Status is read at Login, then View Application status, then Track Application status, then the App Ref No., then Get Data, per the instructions for online submission under the Events programme.

A half-finished form is tracked the same way. Saving as a draft pops the reference number up immediately, and the draft is then reopened through View status of Application and View Incomplete Application. DSIR reserves the right to summarily reject an application at any stage if it is convinced the form is not properly filled or the relevant information is missing, so the tracking screen is worth checking before the committee ever meets.

How winners are picked

Selection process

A Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) is the body that decides. It recommends which proposals are supported and it also signs off on individual expenditure items outside the standard heads, which then need the competent authority's approval. DSIR describes its event support as selective and merit based, aligned to national priorities.

For events the committee's calendar is fixed and public: the TAC sits in January, May and September, and every proposal is slotted into one of those three meetings by the window it arrived in.

Once a study is sanctioned, oversight passes to a Project Review Committee (PRC) constituted by DSIR. The grantee submits its draft report at PRC meetings, incorporates the committee's comments, and returns a revised draft within a month.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Sanction conditions are short and they bite. Funds are utilised as per the approved head without deviation from one activity to another, unspent amounts return to the Government of India, and expenditure above the sanctioned figure is borne by the organisation.

DSIR keeps a termination right at every stage, exercisable if the department is convinced the grant is not being used properly or that the work is not progressing. The same clause allows termination where the PI or the organising institution does not supply information the department has asked for.

Event grantees carry a reporting duty of their own: actual expenditure incurred and revenue generated from all sources, DSIR's own contribution included. Proposals are also expected to state quantifiable outputs, outcomes and benefits at the application stage, which is what the closing report is then read against.

Get help

Contact

A2K+ is administered from the Industrial R&D wing of the department. Two lines carry its business, 011-26859460 and 26590463, and the officer printed on the events proforma as the person a completed application is addressed to is Dr. Vipin Shukla, Scientist G and Head of A2K+, at the New Delhi-110016 office.

Queries about a Studies proposal go to Dr. Vandana Kalia, Scientist F, at the same address, on 011-26590404, the number printed on the 2023 call.

The department itself works out of New Building I at Technology Bhawan on the New Mehrauli Road campus, as its compendium's back page gives the address, and that is where posted hard copies land.

The scheme's public record, with the eligibility and benefit text as the government's scheme finder reproduces it, sits at myScheme.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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References

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