Smart India Hackathon 2023: 'Chandrayaan-3's successful landing on Moon has changed world's perception about India,' says PM Modi

Chandrayaan-3's successful landing on the Moon has changed India's perception across the globe and that the coming decade is going to be essential for the space-tech economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday during his virtual interaction with the participants of the Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon, 2023.

He said the world is confident that India will find low-cost, quality, sustainable, and scalable solutions to global challenges. "Our Chandrayaan mission has increased the expectations of the world manifold."

Smart India Hackathon (SIH) is a nationwide initiative to provide students a platform to solve the pressing problems of Ministries and Departments of the Government, industries, and other organisations. Launched in 2017, the SIH has gained popularity among the young innovators. In the last five editions, many innovative solutions have emerged in different domains and stand out as established startups.

In this year's hackathon, more than 50,000 ideas were received from 44,000 teams - an almost seven-fold increase compared to the first edition of the SIH, according to the Prime Minister's Office.

Interacting with participants of the Grand Finale, PM Modi said: "You all work hard at the Smart India Hackathon but I get the opportunity to learn as well. This is the reason I try to interact with you all whenever there is a Smart India Hackathon." He said he was told that this team was working to develop IoT based system for Railway Cargo and there were Bangladesh students in the team as well.

The Prime Minister said that the Indian Railways was going through its transformational phase and that new innovation would be of great help. "The Central government is spending thousands of crores on this and our focus is also on logistics. Your innovation will be of great help," he said. "I felt good seeing students from Bangladesh in your team. We have started the 'Study in India' program for students from foreign countries to come to India for higher studies."

During the address, the PM said the power sector and artificial intelligence both are important in shaping the future of India. "Therefore, we will have to find ways to connect both...In the past few years, we have worked towards providing electricity to every village and every family. Now, we are working towards harnessing the power of solar."

Highlighting the challenges with new tech, the Prime Minister said: "We have to be careful with the new technology. If these are used carefully, they could be very useful. However, if these are misused it could create huge problems. You must be aware of deepfake videos made with the help of Generative AI. These videos look very real, and therefore, we need to be very careful before believing in the authenticity of a video or an image. India is emphasizing a global framework for AI."

In a statement on Monday, the PMO said over 12,000 participants and more than 2500 mentors will take part in the grand finale scheduled to be held at 48 nodal centres across the country. A total of 1282 teams have been shortlisted this year for the grand finale to provide solutions on various themes including Space Technology, Smart Education, Disaster Management, Robotics and Drones, Heritage and Culture etc.

The participating teams will tackle and provide solutions for 231 problem statements (176 software and 55 hardware) posted by 51 departments of 25 Union Ministers and State governments. The total prize for Smart India Hackathon 2023 is more than Rs 2 crore, where each winning team will be awarded the cash prize of Rs 1 lakh per problem statement.