PM interacts with students via video-conferencing

Our Correspondent

Phagwara, March 3

Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted live with students participating in Smart India Hackathon (SIH) 2019 at Lovely Professional University’s (LPU) nodal centre.

While addressing students at the grand finale of the SIH via video-conference, the Prime Minister interacted with student groups on various themes such as agriculture, finance, malnutrition and education.

The Prime Minister shared with the students that the Indian economy was growing rapidly and the country was setting new benchmarks in innovation.

He said India was presently the third biggest start-up nation and advised the students to make this a regular event.

The Prime Minister asked the students to find out solutions to two urgent problems of society — real time integrated solution under proper information to home, school and police officials for the safety of children and women while going out to schools/markets and coming back to home; and to help small fruit and vegetable traders to have e-market type of home delivery on local level.

Students assured him to keep on utilising maximum internet, machine learning, artificial intelligence, information technology, robotics, cloud computing and more to solve out different problems.

The occasion was world’s biggest two-day grand finale of open innovation mode competition organised on the LPU campus, where the participating students made innovative solutions at the mega tech competition for many technical problems being faced by society.

The competition witnessed 36-hour result oriented brain-storming by nearly 250 students forming 40 teams from across India.

The event was organised by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, with assistance and observation from the AICTE and MSME.

Three smart teams of LPU students also participated at distant nodal centres established at top institutions of Bangalore, Telangana and Hubli (Karnataka).

In fact, the MHRD’s SIH is an initiative to provide students with a common platform to solve some of pressing problems people face in day-to-day life and thus inculcate a culture of product innovation and a mind-set of problem-solving.

This year, the SIH 2019 included themes such as smart communication, smart vehicles, agriculture and rural development, food technology, healthcare and biomedical devices, clean water, waste management, renewable energy, robotics and drones, security and surveillance, technology ideas in tertiary sectors — hospitality, financial services, entertainment, tourism and retail.

The third edition of the SIH event had more than 50 lakh student applicants from more than 6,000 institutions from across the country.

Students from IISc, IITs, NITs, private institutions including, LPU and other AICTE/UGC approved institutions, competed nationwide to creatively solve problems and offer technical solutions.

It was held at 48 nodal centres across the country simultaneously.

Smart India Hackathon

While addressing students at the grand finale of the Smart India Hackathon via video-conference, the Prime Minister interacted with student groups on various themes such as agriculture, finance, malnutrition and education. The PM shared with the students that the Indian economy was growing rapidly and the country was setting new benchmarks in innovation.