To acknowledge and celebrate the efforts undertaken for women empowerment in the country, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has recently announced the Lilavati Award. Launched by the Minister of Education, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank via a virtual conference, the awards are aimed to honour the efforts taken in the field of women’s development and create ‘equality and fairness’ for women in all spheres of their lives, as per AICTE.

The award will be given in sub-themes, namely, women’s health, literacy, self-defense, legal awareness, along with sanitation and hygiene, to individuals and institutes affiliated with AICTE on their contribution in the area of women empowerment. The move is aimed to create awareness about issues such as sanitisation, health, nutrition using traditional Indian values among others. The entries are invited under the category institutional/team level comprises either of students/faculty/both from AICTE approved technical institutions/deemed to be university who had undertaken remarkable intervention in the various sub-themes and made an impact in the society.

Teams can apply based on their work undertaken in the last two years but the team should be comprising of five people with at least two women members. The aim of these novel yet innovative awards is to create awareness and promote efforts in the field of women empowerment. The applications can be sent in form of a short video clip explaining the work done in any sub-themes and the entries will be evaluated by a committee accordingly.

In each sub-category, the top three winners will be award with certificates as well as prize money. The first prize winner will get Rs 1 lakh, the second winner will get Rs 75,000 and the third winner will get Rs 50,00. At the launch, Pokhriyal said, “If you educate a man, you educate a person but if we educate a woman, you educate an entire generation.”