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The judging panel: Narasimhan Santhanam, and two other judges, one from Exnora Chennai and the other from SELCO.
With the intention of making IIT-Madras a sustainable campus, an inter-hostel competition, “The Sustainability Challenge” was launched for the academic year 2010-11 as part of the TECHSOC. The challenge was aimed at optimizing the use of energy and resources in hostels and managing them as efficiently as possible. In the first phase, hostels were primarily asked to focus on electricity consumption, along with working on any other area(s) if they thought it was required.
The first phase of the competition was conducted during September-November 2010.
Mr. Narasimhan was invited to be one of the judges for the Sustainability Challenge.
The competition was coordinated by the Sustainability Network of IIT Madras - http://students.iitm.ac.in/activities/snet
In all, seven hostels participated – Alaknanda, Ganga, Narmada, Sharavathi, Saraswathi, Godavari & Tamaraparani
Highlights
- While most of the hostels had done a good amount of thinking, some hostels had gone ahead and implemented a few systems
- Except for a few hostels, most of them were focussed on solar PV alone
- The hostels that did best (in Narasimhan’s opinion) were those which appreciated that the concept of sustainability comprised an integrated system of clean energy, natural resources and sustainable lifestyle.
Overall, the judges were asked to rate each hostel on five parameters. Narasimhan’s top marks went to the Tamaraparani Hostel, which was the eventual winner as well. Narasimhan felt this was the hostel that had not just out-thought the others, but it was also the one that had gone ahead and implemented a number of such ideas.
In his award speech, Narasimhan mentioned that while the IIT-ians overall had done excellent work in this regard, their presentations could have been much better. Most presentations were just pieces of data and did not truly reflect the kind of quality thinking and designing the students had put in – especially as these guys represented the cream of Indian students.
Overall, it was a satisfying day for Narasimhan, and more so when you consider that IIT Madras was his alma mater.