The ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ grand finale concluded on April 2 at the Civil Aviation Training College (CATC), Bamruali, and Allahabad. At the CATC, one among 26 locations for ‘Smart Hackathon 2017’, 58 teams from across India participated for the 36 hour event, with students formulating solutions for improving governance and to come up with innovative solutions for India’s daunting problems.
The two day event held on April 1 and 2, aimed at harnessing the creativity and expertise of students got to an aspiring start with Prakash Javadekar, minister for Human Resource Development announcing the start of Hackathon 2017 through a video speech. The participant teams worked under the guidance of their mentor, two for each team, suggesting workable solution for the problems presented. There were 12 evaluators present from different government departments including Airports Authority of India (AAI) and All India Council for Higher Education (AICTE) evaluating the performance of teams.
The Hackathon got a further boost later in the day with Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India addressing and interacting with the participants via video conferencing.
He highlighted the importance of technology, research and innovation and why it is essential to embrace them in this century.
It is a unique initiative intended to promote innovation and out-of-the-box thinking in young minds, especially engineering students is initiated by All India Council for Higher Education(AICTE), under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and in collaboration with i4C, Persistent Systems, NASSCOM and Rambhau Mhalgi Pabodin (RMP). The Ministry of Civil Aviation was a premier partner in this event.