A thriving culture of indigenous innovations and problem-solving forms the core of a self-reliant India or Atmanirbhar Bharat. Also, central to the vision of the NEP 2020 is the tutee’s ability to use knowledge to create social impact, especially through the use of contemporary tech-driven solutions.

It is against this backdrop that the fourth edition of the Smart India Hackathon, held in August 2020, takes centre stage in the nation’s concerted efforts to prepare our young task force to take on the challenges of the 21st century. By encouraging students to devise smart solutions to real-world problems, the aim is to create not just engineers but innovators, changemakers and leaders of the future.

In compliance with the prevalent social distancing norms, the 36-hour non-stop hackathon was conducted entirely virtually marking a commendable feat of adaptability and dynamism of our exceptional student community. Over 10,000 students from across the country developed technologies in response to nearly 350 problem statements posed by central ministries, state governments and industry personnel. What was remarkable, however, was the extensive AI-integration in a majority of these projects, including many of the winning ideas.

“Artificial Intelligence is a technology whose time has come. Among the gamut of ideas presented at the Smart India Hackathon 2020, AI was used for a multiplicity of projects ranging from digital payment validation to power failure detection. Our young innovators have demonstrated phenomenal interpretations of disruptive technologies. By exposing our students to such opportunities, we are preparing an industry-ready and AI-ready workforce for the country,” quoted Dr Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer for the Ministry of Education.

The Prime Minister, in his virtual interaction with the finalists, took a special interest in the technologies behind the competing ideas and offered his valuable insights. “Data-driven solutions are ushering in a wave of revolution in the healthcare sector. This is bringing an affordable and world-class health service to the poorest and remotest villages of India,” told the Hon’ble PM to a team that is training an AI-based virtual assistant for life-saving medical equipment.

On the use of AI in the domain of security, surveillance and policing, PM Modi said, “Artificial Intelligence can play a great role in making our policing effective, interactive and people-friendly”. Students presented AI-enabled tools such as chatbots, real-time face recognition and criminal detection softwares. The PM advised, however, that “giving artificial intelligence a human touch is also very important.”

Interacting with a team of finalists who were using Machine Learning to enable preventive maintenance of river embankments, PM Modi said, “By accurately predicting such data, we can prevent a major cause of flooding.” He also appreciated the efforts of another team that had created an AI-powered corporate action bot for a stock market analysis for use by investors.

A winning team explained the process behind their AI-based computer vision accident detection saying, “We extensively worked with image data and computer vision to create our AI and Computer Vision-Based Accident Detection System. We researched multiple object detection models, along with Neural Network architectures to find the perfect classifier for our project. We also manually created image datasets for training purposes. Significant testing and optimizations were done to ensure we had the best possible f-1 score for our models.”

Applauding the effort of the participants, Hon’ble PM said, “Friends, you are among the best and brightest of India. This Hackathon is not the first problem you have tried to solve. Nor is this the last. I want you, and youngsters like you not to stop doing three things: learning, questioning and solving. When you learn, you get the wisdom to question. When you question, you get out-of-the-box methods to solve problems. When you do that, you grow. Due to your effort, our nation grows. Our planet prospers."