The Indian Prime Minister recently addressed the grand finale of the Smart India Hackathon 2022 via video conferencing. This event is catching headlines due to its large-scale impact and innovative approach towards solving everyday issues.
Understanding Smart India Hackathon
Smart India Hackathon (SIH) is a nationwide initiative that was launched in 2017. This annual event aims at giving a platform to students for solving the problems we encounter daily. It was designed to instill a culture of product innovation and problem-solving mindset.
SIH is conducted in two formats, namely SIH Software and SIH Hardware editions. These are specifically catered towards higher education students. Starting from 2017, four editions of SIH; SIH2017, SIH2018, SIH2019, and SIH2020 have been successfully conducted. These have proven to be influential in encouraging innovation and creative thinking among young minds across India, notably engineering students.
Smart India Hackathon is an initiative by the Ministry of Education, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Persistent Systems, and Inter Institutional Inclusive Innovation Centre (i4C).
Aims and Goals
The primary objective of the SIH is to foster a culture of product innovation, problem-solving, and distinctive thinking among students. It strives to engage students’ minds into thinking about plausible solutions for practical issues.
The 2022 Edition of SIH
Over the years, the participation in SIH has seen a four-fold increase. As compared to around 7,500 teams in the first edition, about 29,600 teams registered for the ongoing fifth edition in 2022. Moreover, over 15,000 students and mentors have travelled to 75 nodal centres to participate in the grand finale of SIH 2022.
Participants from over 2900 schools and 2200 Higher Education Institutions are expected to tackle 476 problem statements across 53 Union Ministries. The problem statements include topics such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of Temple inscriptions and translations in Devanagari Scripts, an IoT-enabled risk monitoring system in Cold Supply Chain for perishable food items, High-resolution 3D model of terrain, infrastructure and road conditions in disaster-struck areas, among others.
Introduction of Smart India Hackathon – Junior
In 2022, the organizers have also introduced the Smart India Hackathon – Junior as a pilot. This is designed for school students to imbibe a culture of innovation and develop problem-solving attitude at an early age.
