When the eleventh version of India International Science Festival (IISF) opened in Panchkula on December 6, 2025, it felt much less like a traditional convention and extra like a “science mahakumbh”. Over 4 packed days at Sector-5, Haryana’s satellite tv for pc metropolis became a reside laboratory – with schoolchildren jostling for selfies with astronauts, researchers explaining polar science to farmers, and trade leaders debating Artificial Intelligence and future jobs underneath the banner of Viksit Bharat 2047.
Jointly organised by the Ministry of Science & Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, a number of nationwide science businesses and Vijnana Bharati, with the Government of Haryana as host, IISF 2025 was held across the core theme “Vigyan se Samruddhi: Towards an Atmanirbhar Bharat” – Science for Prosperity and Self-Reliance. The competition’s broader motto, as articulated by Union Science & Technology Minister Dr Jitendra Singh, rested on three pillars: Celebration, Communication and Career. By the time the competition concluded on December 9, IISF 2025 had recorded greater than 2 lakh footfalls, with round 1,800 college students, 167 academics and 32 useful resource individuals taking part in its main occasions, alongside a whole lot of scientists, innovators and trade leaders.
“Celebration, Communication and Career”
Inaugurating IISF 2025, Dr Jitendra Singh was cautious to stress what makes the competition totally different from a typical scientific meet. IISF, he mentioned, was conceived as an open, public-facing competition, not a closed-door technical convention. It is supposed to take Science “beyond laboratories and into the public domain”, permitting extraordinary residents, particularly college students and younger researchers, to immediately have interaction with India’s scientific achievements and rising applied sciences. He framed IISF as a nationwide platform constructed on celebration of achievements, communication of data, and profession alternatives for the following era. “By bringing scientists, institutions and the beneficiaries of research onto one common platform, IISF reflects the government’s push to break silos between science ministries and link innovation with governance.”
Placed within the broader developmental context, Dr Singh underlined that Science and Technology now sit on the core of India’s financial and social transformation. In the final decade, the nation has moved to a mission-mode method increasing analysis infrastructure, bettering expertise pipelines, and embedding scientific considering into governance, from subtle climate forecasting and early-warning techniques to superior polar analysis and digital public infrastructure.
Antarctica to AI: INDIA’S Science Footprint on Display
One placing function of IISF 2025 was the best way it compressed far-flung frontiers underneath one roof. At the inauguration, Dr Jitendra Singh interacted reside with Indian polar scientists at Bharati station in Antarctica, reviewing ongoing analysis within the Southern Ocean and cryosphere.The “Science on a Sphere” set up, a globe-shaped digital show, turned a serious attraction, permitting guests to visualise knowledge on local weather, oceans and climate in immersive kind.
At the opposite excessive of the planet, house science got here alive by way of reveals from ISRO and the Department of Space. A particular nine-minute movie on India’s 63-year house journey walked guests from the early days of sounding rockets to the newest AI-enabled techniques, new propulsion applied sciences and missions like Aditya-L1. Secretary, Department of Space and ISRO Chairman Dr V. Narayanan famous that 57 Indian satellites at present help practically 50 functions, a quantity anticipated to triple in coming years.
Complementing these have been interactive classes on Artificial Intelligence and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). A high-level panel that includes consultants from IIT Ropar, Intel, NVIDIA and Sarvam AI debated India’s path from AI adoption to AI management. They spoke concerning the IndiaAI Mission to practice one crore youth in AI, develop sovereign Indian-language fashions, and construct nationwide compute capability, repeatedly linking these efforts to the aim of Viksit Bharat@2047.
Matsya 6000 and the Blue Economy Push
If one exhibit symbolised India’s subsequent leap into uncharted territory, it was Matsya 6000 – the nation’s first indigenously developed human deep-sea submersible, showcased by the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
Dr Jitendra Singh Matsya 6000 as a flagship of India’s deep-ocean described. The mission goals to ship Indian researchers to ocean depths of 6,000 metres, making India one of many few nations with ultra-deep-sea exploration functionality. The roadmap, as shared at IISF, envisions a primary 500-metre crewed dive in 2026, adopted by a full-depth 6,000-metre mission in 2027.
Matsya 6000 was not offered in isolation. It anchored the broader Blue Economy conversations at IISF 2025, underlining how deep-sea exploration, marine biodiversity research and ocean-bed sources match into India’s long-term financial imaginative and prescient. Specialised classes explored ocean-based renewable vitality, coastal resilience, and the interface between ocean science and livelihood safety for coastal communities.
New Nalanda of contemporary india
If IISF 2025 was a mela, then college students have been its heartbeat. Over the 4 days, greater than 10,000 college students thronged the venue, a lot of them from authorities colleges and smaller cities throughout Haryana and neighbouring states.
The specifically curated Students’ Science and Technology Village turned an emblem of this youth-centric method. Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, attending as Chief Guest on Day two, formally inaugurated the village and evocatively described it because the “New Nalanda” of contemporary India – a residing campus the place learners may work together immediately with scientists, technologists and innovators.
Saini’s keynote went past ceremonial phrases. He urged scientists to “take science beyond the walls of laboratories and ensure that its benefits reach the last person in society.” True prosperity, he argued, comes when scientific information helps a farmer improve crop yield, cures a affected person’s sickness, or empowers an entrepreneur to begin a brand new enterprise.
Calling science “not just a career, but a medium for nation-building”, Saini reminded the younger viewers that they’re the era that can rework India right into a developed nation.
“Viksit Bharat 2047 Is Your Mission”
For schoolchildren, the star attraction was actually a person who had seen the celebs up shut. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, the second Indian to journey to house, held an prolonged interactive session that turned probably the most talked-about occasions at IISF 2025.
Shukla shared experiences from his practically 20-day house mission – the joys of watching Bharat seem “better than the entire world” from orbit, and the battery of scientific experiments he carried out, a lot of them designed to help India’s human space-flight programme underneath Gaganyaan. While he spoke about experiments on India-centric meals, medicines and new applied sciences in microgravity, it was his message to the youth that resonated most strongly. Shukla advised college students that the dream of a Viksit Bharat 2047 rests on their shoulders and that “when the youth progresses, the nation progresses.”
He additionally traced his personal journey again to the day in 2018 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced from the Red Fort that an Indian son or daughter would quickly go to house.
Khattar’s Call for “Responsible Intelligence”
On Day 3, Union Minister for Power and Housing & Urban Affairs Manohar Lal Khattar introduced the dialog firmly into the area of digital applied sciences and governance. Addressing a packed viewers, he framed Artificial Intelligence as each a transformative and delicate expertise for India’s journey to Viksit Bharat 2047.
“AI is a good servant but a bad master,” he cautioned, arguing that whereas AI will drive progress by way of innovation, startups and new abilities, it should be deployed with accountability, transparency and public belief.
He positioned India’s AI story inside an extended continuum from historic Indian concepts of long-distance communication and information networks to trendy house missions and digital applied sciences which have “made the world fit in our palm.” By linking curiosity-driven experiments to main innovations, he inspired college students to preserve asking questions, noting that at this time’s tinkering usually turns into tomorrow’s breakthrough.
The ceremony closed with a vote of thanks from scientists of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, bringing the four-day celebration to a dignified end.