“If the challenge exists, so must the solution.”
Smart India Hackathon (SIH) seems to base its existence on this idea. SIH provides a nationwide platform for students to apply their problem-solving and coding skills for innovative solutions to various daunting problems in the country.
SIH is held annually by The Ministry of Education Innovation Cell (MIC) in coordination with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). This year, SIH was launched under the initiative of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav on January 11, 2022.
MIC and AICTE streamed two webinars on YouTube to provide insights on SIH. The webinars were presided over by Dr. Abhay Jere, CIO, MIC. The first webinar was held on February 9, 2022, in which Dr. Jere talked about the aim, vision, salient features, dos/don’ts, timeline, and benefits. The second webinar was held on February 25, 2022, and addressed the doubts of institutes and colleges.
SIH requires colleges to nominate teams of 6 members via an internal hackathon.
The internal hackathon in S.P.I.T. took place in March. Students were to select a problem, either hardware or software, from a list on the official website of SIH. They had to present their solution to a team of external experts who scored them. This year, as per requests from many institutes, the count of team nominations was increased from 15 to 30. Twenty teams were shortlisted and ten were put on the waitlist.
The shortlisted and waitlisted teams had to upload their presentation and reports after registering themselves on the official portal of SIH before April 17, 2022.
This year had a new category called the Wild Card Entry. Under this, the college could nominate multiple teams that could not clear the internal hackathon. The new teams and the shortlisted/waitlisted teams could propose multiple ideas for a given problem, a new one for SIH. The last dates to register and submit ideas were April 22 and 30 respectively.
The internal hackathon and wild card entries saw students take great effort and enthusiasm. Chirag, the leader of one of the waitlisted teams said, “The externals were very calm which helped us. They told us to keep our presentations short and precise and be confident in whatever we had done.”
Overall, the participating students enjoyed and learned a lot in the process.
-A report by Krushi Panchal