While many technocrats dream of working abroad to flesh out their portfolios, Sreevas Sahasranamam says he enjoys working in the social domain because that is where the real India is. For Sreevas, social domain translates into rural areas in India. A doctoral student in strategic management at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, the 22-year-old, a former student of College of Engineering, Trivandrum, says he moved to management because he was not enthused by core technical work of engineering.
An ardent advocate of renewable energy resources, Sreevas has the statistics at his fingertips when he speaks about why people in Kerala should find alternative energy resources for their homes and work places and not depend totally on hydel or thermal power. And he should know. As a student, he was part of a three-member team that worked to light up Chetadchatapu, a small village near Anchal, which was about five km away from the electrical grid.
“It was a project funded by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and sponsored by the local integrated network of Kerala IEEE Students. The Kerala State Electricity Board identified this village surrounded by dense forest. It was difficult to electrify this village as it would have been very expensive and that is how the three of us –Jery Athaf and Sankar R – of us took up a project to turn to solar energy to light up this village,” says Sreevas.
He turned his experience into a book Rural Electrification Using Solar Power – A Model For Developing Country published by Lap Lambert Academic Publishing.
“Depending only on solar energy is not a good idea in a state like Kerala. So, we may need a mix of energy resources. Given that energy costs are going up every year, solar energy might be the best alternative and the initial cost of installation would be taken care of by the decrease in energy bills over the years,” explains Sreevas, a winner of the 2012 IEEE Humanitarian Technology Student Paper contest for his work in the field of technology.
With missionary zeal, Sreevas is spreading the word about solar energy and renewable resources.
Srevas says he plans to teach and adds with a smile that he has no plans of appearing for the civil service examinations.
