Udupi: Showing how participative governance is delivered, the Udupi district administration has roped in students to find out realistic solutions to five core issues that plague the district.

The district administration, under its initiative ‘Grand Challenge Udupi’ has thrown open a challenge to the students and faculty alike from not only Udupi, but also Dakshina Kannada to identify solutions to issues in drinking water resources, pre-school and primary education, solid waste management, migrant labour and women’s health.

The district administration has partnered with the Manipal Academy of Higher Education for the purpose.

“We talk a lot about how citizens should be involved in working towards development. We thought of going a step forward in this regard. This is a social innovation hackathon,” assistant commissioner of Udupi Shilpa Nag told.

According to Shilpa, the idea behind involving students is to get out of the box ideas. “We are looking for innovative solutions. Even though we have an entire system in place, there is one-track mindset of how things should work. We also have limitation of resources. The modern day students keep coming up with out of the box things.

Since they too are citizens, it becomes their responsibility to develop the district. Hence we decided to get them on board to solve current challenges. We do not expect them just to suggest changes, but also partner with the district administration in implementing the ideas at the district level,” Shilpa said.

Deputy commissioner Priyanka Mary Francis was apprised of the idea of involving students when she visited an institute in Manipal for an event as chief guest some three months ago. Welcoming the suggestions by the institute, the district administration decided to give the idea a form. “We called a meeting between various government departments during which officers were asked to pinpoint areas of core concern in their ambit,” Priyanka said.

Based on the suggestions by the officials concerned, the district administration picked five areas of core concern which needed to be fixed on priority.

“We also zeroed in on these five areas keeping in mind that students, too, easily understand them. These issues revolve around the daily needs of people,” Shilpa said.

To make the initiative more appealing to its target audiences, the district administration has designed a logo and created a blog, in which detailed problem statements have been mentioned.

“They (the issues) are multidimensional. Some need to be solved at the grass-root level while a few of need to be addressed at the intermediate and macro levels. We will consider whatever can be implemented at the district level right away. If government intervention is needed, we will forward such ideas to the higher authorities for suitable consideration,” Shilpa said.

The last date to submit the application is January 7. A minimum of three can form a team. The competition has been thrown open not only to students from Udupi, but also Dakshina Kannada. Faculty members can also participate in the event. Best solutions will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 50,000.

“The teams need to first send us a write-up of around 500 words. A multidisciplinary committee comprising officials from various departments, academicians and experts in the respective fields will review these ideas and shortlist teams. Solutions qualitative in nature and implementable will be chosen.

Accordingly, we will call the shortlisted teams for presentation on January 14 for a five to seven minutes presentations,” Shilpa said, adding that winner will be selected from each area. In addition to cash, members from the winning team will also get a certificate by the district administration and a chance to partner with it in implementing the ideas.