Innovation real way to achieve country's prosperity: HRD Minister

Pune: Innovation was the real way of achieving prosperity in country which can be achieved by letting young minds think out of box, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said here today.

"Innovation is the real way of achieving the nation's prosperity and we can achieve it by allowing creativity and allowing young minds to experiment and letting their crazy ideas come out," the minister said.

He was addressing students at KPIT Sparkle 2017 event.

"We want to change this all and that is why we are bringing innovation as prime theme education, especially in higher education, and that is the policy of the Narendra Modi government," Javadekar said.

The 3rd edition of the design and development innovation contest, in collaboration with the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP), received 1,500 ideas on the theme of Smart Cities from over 10,500 engineering and science students across India.

Felicitating the winners of the contest, the BJP leader said though there are several organisations in the country they have become bureaucratic.

"Bureaucratic approach can not lead to research and so research culture, research freedom and research methodology need to be developed," he said.

In order to bring the best of the best talent back to India, government has come up with Global Research Innovation Network, the minister added.

The contest received 1,500 ideas from over 10,500 engineering and science students across 300 colleges in India.

The grand finale saw 35 top teams present prototypes of their solutions on Smart Cities.

Team AlphaGears from the Mangalore Institute of Technology and Engineering won the Platinum prize of Rs 10 lakhs for their project on frictionless gear transmission system for vehicles using poly-magnets.

Team Robo-X-Prime from R C Patel Institute of Technology, Shirpur, Maharashtra, won the Gold prize for developing an inspection robot for power transmission lines.

The Silver prizes were won by Team Robo-Climb from College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) for their autonomous vehicle solution called Wall Climbing Robot, which can be used for transportation of goods as well as humans over the distance and Team Traffic Eye from BITS, Pilani for their project Traffic Eye to check traffic violations.

The most popular project award went to Team Humanoids from Kalinga Institute Of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar, for their project on the device to control emission of exhaust gas using plasma technology, which results in less electric power consumption with no harmful gases discharged in air.

Padmashree Dr. Kiran Karnik, Former President, NASSCOM, Ravi Pandit, Co-founder, Chairman & Group CEO, KPIT, Dr Raghunath Mashelkar Chairman of the Innovation Committee, KPIT were present.