Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the world’s largest hackathon on Saturday i.e., April 1.
Smart India Hackathon, the 36-hour non-stop digital programming competition, will start at 8am in 26 different locations in the country with each location handled by one central department or ministry.
Aimed at promoting innovation, the exercise would see nearly 10,000 students producing digital solutions to 598 problems, a release from the Ministry of Electronics and IT said.
The 598 problems have been identified and posted by 29 central government departments and include issues like geo-fencing of airports, online toll collection, smart traffic management, cyber attacks and smart drones to make the airspace safer.
The top three teams would be awarded Rs 1 lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively and the digital solutions so awarded would be used by the ministry/departments for improving their governance systems, if necessary, with suitable upgradation.
All the prize winners would be connected to form a Community of Innovative Minds. The hackathon also aims at improving awareness about patents in the country.
According to World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), India registers 40 patents per million population.
(With IANS inputs)