Digital Competition for Students: Smart India Hackathon 2017
Prakash Javadekar at the launch of “Smart India Hackathon 2017” in New Delhi on November 09, 2016
If you do not have proven record of success in the related field of work, you are not eligible to hold any government position such as a minister. Unskilled ministers and bureaucrats are destroying our country.~ Rakesh Raman
India’s Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar launched Wednesday a digital nation-building initiative ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ by handing over a torch to technology students.
Through ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’, India’s HRD ministry aims to reach out to all technology institutions in India and challenge students to offer innovative solutions to some of the daunting problems faced by our nation.
Javadekar unveiled the first set of 250 problem statements received from various ministries that the students will be required to solve during the Hackathon that will take place in early 2017.
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‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ plans to harness creativity and technical expertise of over 3 million students from technology institutes in India.
It is a pan-India 36-hour nonstop digital programming competition which will take place in more than 20 centres simultaneously.
Each participating college can nominate up to three teams, each having six team members, which can belong to different courses or semesters within the same college. Each team will need to have at least one female team member, to encourage women coders.
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Each team will also have the option of choosing up to two mentors, who can be faculty, alumni or any other expert in their circles. Each of the participating 25 ministries and government departments will give away prizes to top three teams.
So, 75 teams will stand a chance to win cash rewards as well as a chance to work with those ministries and departments for up to six months to execute their winning solution.
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For every ministry and department, the first prize will be of Rs. 100,000, second prize of Rs. 75,000 and third prize of Rs. 50,000.
Some of the ministries and departments participating in the Hackathon include Railways, External Affairs, Defence, Civil Aviation, Indian Space Research Organization, Department of Atomic Energy, etc.
The Hackathon will have nearly 500 problem statements in all which will be published on innovate.mygov.in.
Photo courtesy: Press Information Bureau
