Exploring National Mentoring Landscape in India: Atal Tinkering Labs as Drivers of Neoteric Innovations

The conceptual understanding of the term “mentoring” refers to the interaction centric interfaces between experienced mentors and protégés that are seeking career centric (instrumental) and psychosocial (relational) knowledge, advice or support (Schunk & Mullen, 2013). Mentorship is a collaborative process that is a “multidimensional relationship between mentor-mentoring team and a mentee that gradually shifts from earlier stages of engagement to later phases of purposeful developmental phases. Mentorship is also relational wherein the relationship between the mentor and the mentee is purely learning oriented and directed towards acquisition of skills. The distinctive characteristic of mentorship is the capacity of creation of “delicate balance between the process of learning and openness to change” (Pfund. C et al., 2015). Navigating across different definitional landscapes of mentorship, this paper unfolds the rationale behind conceiving a national mentoring initiative in India: Atal Tinkering Labs (a pan India initiative). The aim is to train school students in their formative years of development in the domains of creativity, innovation, 3D Designing and Computational skills for developing innovation centric mindsets and innovative career choices. The paper further tables the different innovation interventions brought by the Atal Innovation Mission and the complimentary mentoring models that fit into the different interventions.