Bhubaneswar, Sept. 17: Young techies and budding managers from technical institutes across the state have come up with solutions to some critical challenges that the country is facing.

These fresh minds, with their out-of-the-box ideas, will be battling it out at the finals of Manthan, a youth convention organised by the Citizens for Accountable Governance, a voluntary organisation, to be held in Delhi next month.

“We have received entries from around 700 participants from both government and private institutes in Odisha. These include the Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, the National Law University, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, College of Engineering and scores of other institutes,” said Ipsita Nayak , an organising member.

Siddhant Sadangi and his team from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology have developed a self-sustaining primary school as their project for the competition. Their idea of an affordable school for the masses includes providing quality education with minimum investment.

“There is a poor and marginalised section of a semi-urban society. Parents in the community are enthusiastic about sending their children to school, but avoid government institutions due to the poor quality of education and cannot afford the private ones. The project caters to finding a solution for these people,” said Sadangi.

Piyush Jena and his team from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, are excited about their project on agriculture.

“This competition is different from the regular ones. It is great to know that if successful, our opinions will be incorporated in forming national policy,” said Piyush. Students have put forward their ideas on 14 different themes.

Some of the topics are — universalising access to quality primary health care, ensuring safety and empowerment of women, improving reach and efficiency of the public distribution system, increasing the employability of youth and boosting agricultural productivity ensuring expeditious and timely justice for all, ensuring world-class civic amenities in urban India, promoting research and innovation, introducing electoral reforms to reduce the influence of money and muscle-power in politics, realising the growth potential of the northeast enhancing the quality of primary education and providing social welfare to informal sector workers.

The teams will be short-listed and winners will be decided based on judging criteria and popularity. The winning students will get an opportunity to present their recommendations to the top leadership of the two principal national political parties. Besides cash prizes, these students will also get an opportunity to intern in political and social organisations of repute.