G Soorya

Immerse(#4): SITARA- A Brighter Grid

On the scorching afternoon of 29th July 2012, circuit breakers on the 400 kV Agra-Gwalior-Bina line flung open under the intense load. With 1000 MW power being drawn from this single line whose maximum capacity was near 700 MW, the lines were snapped open, instantly breaking the circuit.

The load then burdened the Agra-Bareilly line, which ran in parallel. It also snapped. With each line getting disengaged, the power deficit snowballed out of control and toppled every line connected in parallel. Within minutes the entire Northern Region Grid, which innervates half of India, collapsed under this cascading catastrophe. 22 states from Assam to Rajasthan and Odisha to Kashmir were plunged into darkness for 2 days. This was the world’s largest wide area blackout, with more than 62 crore people’s lives rattled for days as the engineers scrimmaged to get the grid back on its feet.

Team Speaks: Inter-IIT Chess Meet

Every year, Inter-IIT organizing boards dilly-dally about whether to include chess or not. Alleged that it is not even considered a sport event at times, chess’s staid and sober appearance doesn’t get much fan following even among the Inter-IIT organizers across the country. “Actually, chess was tried only as a trial sport at the Inter-IITs from 2009 to 2011 with Bombay winning all of them, but the organizing IITs refused to conduct it in 2012 and 2013 stating that it wasn’t a physical sport”, says Nitin.

Team Speaks: Athletics

“Athletics needs more publicity, whatever I have achieved in insti, I have achieved only because of athletics. Even though I have played many team sports, the fighting spirit that I have is because of athletics. I became the Sports Secretary last year mainly because of my experience of being in the athletics team” recounts Bipin, loyally vouching for better years to come for the Institute’s athletics culture.”
Soorya G presents snippets of the interview with the Athletics Team from IIT-M for 51st Inter-IIT Sports Meet.

Manifesto Reviews 2015-16: Saikanth Dacha, Student Head of Center for Innovation (CFI)

Saikanth in his tenure as CFI Head has implemented most of the points he had in his vision. He completely revamped the project selection procedure and even boosted up the project completion rate with the help of Project Management Team which was formed for this specific purpose. He was also able to publicize the activities of CFI, be it at insti level through Media team or recognition at national level by representing Tech culture of IIT Madras at Festival of Innovation, Rashtrapati Bhavan. His tenure has been phenomenal and motivated by the need to pay back to the place which has molded him to what he is today.