NIT-T’s innovative bid to find ‘value from waste’

HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, who inaugurated the event from New Delhi via video conferencing, said, “India has missed the industrial revolution; we cannot afford to miss the digital and AI revolutions. This is India’s time and we have to make the paradigm shift from jugaad to real innovation as a habit.”

The hardware edition of Hackathon 2018 is the largest inter-institutional competition from which the next Google or Tesla-like idea will emerge, the minister added.

At the opening of the event, Director Dr Mini Shaji Thomas highlighted the appropriateness of Tiruchy as the nodal centre for the waste management project as the Corporation has successfully executed several initiatives through public-private participation.

In his inaugural address, Tiruchy Corporation Commissioner N Ravichandran placed on record the ruling of the Supreme Court that made waste management a responsibility of every citizen.

Present at the event were Dr Partha P Chakrabarti, Director, IIT, Kharagpur, who greeted the contesting teams as Chairman of Hackathon, 2018, Dr Anand Deshpande, Chairman of Persistent Systems, Professor Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE, and R Subramanyam, Secretary, MHRD. Dr Abhay Jere, organising secretary, SIHH, proposed the vote of thanks.

The six teams from across the country exhibited different project ideas and their prototype working models which was to be evaluated by a panel of experts from institutions and industry.

Focused on the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission, the notable projects included an automatic drainage cleaning system and self-powered biogas plant with solar tracking, among others.