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On August 25, using video conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the students taking part in the grand finale of this year’s Smart India Hackathon (SIH). A national program called SIH was launched in 2017 to give students a forum to address the most critical issues facing companies, governments, and society. It strives to cultivate in students a culture of product invention, problem-solving, and unconventional thinking.
In a press conference, Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been interacting with the student participants of the Smart India Hackathon every year since its inception and he is expected to interact with the students even this year at 8 pm on August 25.” To participate in the SIH 2022 grand finale, more than 15,000 students and mentors are going to the 75 nodal centres.
In the finale, students from more than 2,900 schools and 2,200 higher education institutions will work on 476 problem statements from 53 Union ministries, such as optical character recognition (OCR) of Devanagari-scripted temple inscriptions and translations, an IoT-enabled risk monitoring system in the cold supply chain for perishable food items, a high-resolution 3D terrain model, and the state of infrastructure and roads in disaster-affected areas. SIH publishes two versions each year: SIH Software and SIH Hardware. To foster an innovative culture and a problem-solving mindset among school pupils, the Smart India Hackathon-Junior was also launched this year. Since its debut in 2017, the Smart India Hackathon’s focus has expanded with each passing year.
The increased enthusiasm among participating students and problem statement-providing organizations could be seen in their growing participation over the years.
SIH has an annual influence on thousands of students and offers them a national platform to evaluate their academic learning for resolving practical problems “added Sarkar. “Additionally, it synchronises their interest in entrepreneurship and innovation. 53 governmental bodies submitted a total of 476 problem statements to the SIH this year. More than 15,000 students from the winning teams of the institute-level hackathons held as part of Smart India Hackathon 2022 will take part in this year’s SIH national grand finale.
During the grand finale, these teams will travel to the designated nodal centre and work on these issue statements,” he continued. The hardware grand finale of the Smart India Hackathon is slated for August 25–29, while the software grand finale is scheduled for August 25–26. Every year, in different nodal centres, the Smart India Hackathon is held. Selected student teams, business representatives, design mentors, and judges go to the designated physical centres.
The Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell and the All India Council for Technical Education have designated 75 higher educational institutions and incubators as Smart India Hackathon nodal centres as part of the “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav” celebrations. These institutions will serve as host institutions for SIH participants and provide the necessary infrastructure for the event to proceed according to its predetermined and established format.
“An official chosen by the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell will oversee the proceedings at each nodal centre throughout the whole SIH grand finale. It’s also impressive how many women participated in the Smart India hackathon. Participants who are travelling to the nodal locations for the hackathon’s big finale are almost evenly split between men and women “said Sarkar. The number of teams registered for SIH has increased four-fold, from roughly 7,500 in the first edition to about 29,600 in the current fifth edition, the speaker continued.
Each issue statement’s Smart India Hackathon winner will receive a prize worth Rs 1 lakh. Three prizes totaling Rs 1 lakh, Rs 75,000, and Rs 50,000 will be given to the winning teams in the student innovation category.
