Union Minister of Jal Shakti, Shri C. R. Patil today launched the ‘Jal Shakti Hackathon–2025’ & Bharat-WIN Portal at Shram Shakti Bhawan, New Delhi. The initiative is aligned with the vision of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and his emphasis on ‘Water Vision @2047’ to strengthen scientific and technological solutions in India’s water sector.

Addressing the gathering, Shri C. R. Patil described the Jal Shakti Hackathon–2025 as a national movement rather than a mere competition, designed to mobilise the country’s collective talent to build a secure, inclusive and technology-driven water future for India.

A Public Good for National Participation

The Hackathon aims to promote innovation in the water sector and make it a truly public good, accessible to all stakeholders. It adopts a Whole-of-Government and Whole-of-Society (Jan Bhagidari) approach, enabling broad participation from citizens, researchers, industries, and innovators.

Hosted at https://bharatwin.mowr.gov.in, the portal forms part of the national platform BHARAT–WIN (Water Innovation Network) and seeks to promote practical, scalable and field-ready solutions to grassroots water challenges. These include farm-level water conservation, rural water quality, smart monitoring, revival of traditional water practices, flood and drought management.

The initiative expands the scope of water-sector research beyond a limited set of institutions, ensuring participation from a wide range of stakeholders including Startups, MSMEs, Industry, Scientists, Academia, Laboratories, Incubators, Young Innovators, Rural and Women Youth, Private Sector, and Global Institutions.

Key Features

• Conducts periodic hackathons and calls for proposals on national water priorities.
• Ensures transparent submission, evaluation, and tracking of ideas.
• Enables participation from Startups, MSMEs, Academia, Industry, and Innovators from NER and Women-led enterprises.
• Supports collaborative innovation through Jan Bhagidari.

Under the scheme on ‘Research and Development Programme in Water Sector and Implementation of National Water Mission’, DoWR, RD&GR, MoJS, will provide financial assistance in the form of grants-in-aid for selected innovations.

The hackathon winners will receive a grant of ₹1 lakh for developing Proof-of-Concept (PoC). The priority areas include, water resource management, wastewater treatment, water-use efficiency, circular economy, climate resilience, IoT & smart water grids, precision agriculture, rainwater harvesting, river-basin and flood management, and hydrological modelling etc.

The National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorkee, has been designated as Project Implementation Agency (PIA) to scrutinize submitted proposals and to facilitate for approval of Secretary, DoWR, RD&GR.

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ND