Javadekar Launches 'Smart India Hackathon 2017'
“Smart India Hackathon 2017” is a 36-hour non-stop digital competition where thousands of students from various educational institutions across the country would work on 500 problems received from various ministers and come up with solutions.
Union Minister of Human Resource and Development, Prakash Javadekar has launched the world’s largest digital national building initiative “Smart India Hackathon 2017” by handing over a torch to technology students. Under this initiative technology, students in various institutions across the country world rack their brains to come up with solutions to problems which are faced by ministries.
“Smart India Hackathon 2017” is a 36-hour non-stop digital competition where thousands of students from various educational institutions across the country would work on 500 problems received from various ministers and come up with solutions. It is the first initiative of this kind that has been ever launched in India.
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On this occasion, Javadekar expressed that research could not be bound to hierarchy and promotions happen only in the hierarchy. He emphasised that inquisitiveness and freedom are needed for innovation. Tapping the potential of the youth is the key to solving these problems. He also stated that he has complete faith in the fact that students would be able to address these problems.
He focused on innovation and was of the opinion that the world is changing at an incredible speed. For instance, new thinking enabled online registration in hospitals like AIIMS. He cited that some of the Indians played a significant role in developing social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Linkedin. Although Indians did not come up with these kinds of social networking sites, they were involved in its development.
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He encouraged youth to come up with innovative entities. He assured that MOOCS platform would soon come up which will play a significant role in spreading education far and wide into the country.
Recently, a Hackathon was conducted in Pune where students solved the problems of municipal bodies through digital solutions, and now, the idea is to take this concept nationwide.