Hackathon 2022: PM Modi pins hope on young innovators to take India to the top

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the country’s young innovators on Friday that they were the flag bearers of the slogan of ‘Jai Anusandhan’ for the fulfillment of big resolutions and their “innovative mindset will take India to the top in the next 25 years.”

Addressing the Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon 2022 via video conferencing, the Prime Minister said that new opportunities are being created for the youth in every sector including drone technology, digital institutions and virtual solutions. From service to manufacturing there are many opportunities, he added.

The Prime Minister emphasised that to increase the culture of innovation in India, we have to pay constant attention to two things – Social support and institutional support. He highlighted that the acceptance of innovation as a profession has increased in society and in such a situation, we have to accept new ideas and original thinking. “Research and innovation must be transformed from the way of working to the way of living,” the Prime Minister said.

He asked the young innovators to take full advantage of the initiatives like optical fibre in every village and launch of 5G, and promotion of the gaming ecosystem. He said that Indian innovations always provide the most competitive, affordable, sustainable, secured and at scale solutions. That is why the world is looking towards India with hope.

The prime Minister also interacted with the participants.

SIX_PIXELS from Kerala was asked by the Prime Minister about their project of translation of text in ancient temples into Devanagari. The all-girl team described the findings, benefits  and process of the project. They said that their work is in response to the Prime Minister’s call from Red Fort.

Actuators team of Tamil Nadu were given a challenge regarding persons with disability. They worked on the problem of bow leg or knock kneed people. Their actuator ‘Prerak’ helps such people. The Prime Minister stressed the need to be self-reliant in the field of medical devices.

Master Viraj Vishwanath Marathe Winner of SIH Junior, from Gujarat has prepared a mobile game application called HCam for people suffering from dementia after realising that dementia is a global health issue. In response to the Prime Minister’s query about being in touch with a Yoga institute, Viraj said that he has been in contact with Yoga instructors who have suggested a few asanas for old age.

Animesh Mishra of DataClan from BIT Mesra Ranchi described the use of deep learning in predicting cyclones. They work on satellite images from INSAT. Their work can help in better prediction of various aspects of cyclones.

Priyansh Diwan of Team Sarvagya from West Bengal informed the Prime Minister about his team’s work of enabling the transfer of multimedia data securely on radio set through radio waves without Internet. He said that with this system in place, the privacy issues can be completely addressed as the app is made indigenously and the servers are also situated in India. When the Prime Minister asked Priyansh if the system can be deployed by the army on border areas, Priyansh said the transmission is encrypted which allows it to be used in areas where the threat of signal interception prevails.

Anshit Bansal of Team Iris of Uttar Pradesh described their problem of creating crime hotspot creation and mapping. Unsupervised machine learning algorithms are being deployed to map the crime cluster. The Prime Minister asked about flexibility and scalability of the model.

Harmanjot Singh, winner of SIH Junior from Punjab showed his project of a smart glove that monitors health parameters. The Smart Glove works on the model of Internet of Medical Things and it helps in monitoring the health vitals like heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation level, mood detection, tremors in the hand and body temperature. The Prime Minister praised his parents for all their support.

In his speech, the Prime Minister said that in the last 7-8 years, the country is progressing rapidly through one revolution after another. “Infrastructure revolution is happening in India today. The Health Sector Revolution is happening in India today. Digital revolution is happening in India today. Technology revolution is happening in India today. Talent Revolution is happening in India today and the focus is on making every sector modern,” he added.

The number of teams registered for SIH has seen a four-fold growth from around 7500 in the first edition to about 29,600 in the ongoing fifth edition, according to an official statement.