Union minister Prakash Javadekar inaugurates Smart India Hackathon 2017 Grand Finale in Mumbai
Mumbai, April 01, 2017
The Smart India Hackathon 2017 is intented for promoting innovation which is the only way to gain sustainable prosperity for the country. This was stated by Union Minister for Human Resource Development Praksh Javadekar at the final round of “Smart India Hackathon 2017” which started in Mumbai today morning. The Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Prakash Javadekar is the Chief Patron of the campaign. Ministry of Human Resource Development spearheaded the campaign through AICTE as the main anchor. The IT industry especially M/S i4C and Persistent Systems, and NASSCOM have led the effort. Mr Abhay Jere of Persistent Systems has coordinated efforts by various Departments and Ministries of the Government of India.
In his address Mr. Prakash Javadekar said we are now in the digital age as we have 112 crore people with Aadharcard number and 108 crore people having mobiles. Therefore the capacity of people to absorb technology has increased, this is the “New India”. Mumbai is among 26 cities where the event is being held simultaneously.
Various departments and Ministries of the Government of India have identified 598 problems to which 7,531 teams of approximately 42,000 students responded. In this 1266 teams of 10000 participants from 28 States were shortlisted for the finale. Some of the problems identified by the Ministry of Railways are - the condition of Railway track is critical for safety of train operations, the condition of tracks needs to be monitored proactively. A software solution which keeps track of the condition of the track and allied infrastructure and generates auto warning messages about the need of urgent maintenance can help in preventing untoward incidents.
It is worth mentioning that the starting point of the Smart India hackathon are the Digital India, Start up India and Make in India campaigns, which need skilled and innovative workforce. With more than 10,000 programmers participating, this would be largest Hackathon anywhere in the world.
As per statistics of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), India registers 40 patents per million population, so considering the intellectual capability of Indians, there is a lot that can be done in the field of innovation. The Smart India Hackathon is an effort in the direction to improve innovation. This can be done by encouraging students to apply knowledge to the real-life situations, and to find innovative solutions to the day-to-day problems.