Adding Value to Society

Adding Value to Society

Today Srikanth Kummari 2017 batch JGU alumni, is involved with political parties on the grass root level trying to understand and frame policies from ground up to address issues bothering the farmers and the common people. But in the beginning of his journey before he came to JGU , Srikanth was on a different path altogether. He was an engineering graduate in Electronics and communication and also the first person in his family who was primarily into farming to complete graduation and was looking towards a usual IT career. A watershed moment came about when the farming communities in his village including his own family were affected due to contaminated ground water, which was primarily used for irrigation. After researching and digging further he found out that the water was getting contaminated due to industrial effluents from Pharma companies. He started spreading awareness about this and also tried to file complaints with the local authorities and the pollution control board but all of this went in vain without any cooperation from the authorities and he further more started receiving threat from the local politicians and muscle men.

This did not deter him and he further approached the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board and tried to file RTI application and PILs but no one was willing to take up his cause and the authorities were unresponsive. This when he decided to change directions and become an activist to root anti environmental activities. He decided that mere interest and intent were not enough and he needed knowledge and technique to approach and address such issues and that is when he joined the Public Policy programme at JSGP, which helped him gain a platform to get a perspective on all such issues and learn to tackle them.

There on he realised that subjective approach would be better than an objective one and that change can only come from within and that is when he decided that it's more productive to enter the political arena and provide the politicians and leaders with inputs and background on issue and help them formulate policy in more effective manner which would give maximum benefit to the grassroot level. He believed that if politicians changed their approach the system would automatically follow.

After graduation he went on to co found Social Post Professional Services which aimed at giving policy support but had to leave it due to some ideological differences. But a revitalised opportunity came his way when he was approached by AICC incharge and a member or Rahul Gandhi’s core team, Mr. Koppula Raju to join their team. Since then Srikanth has been associated with the Indian National Congress and has worked in a key role during their Telangana campaign. He has contributed to their research team on especially grass root activities involving gram sabhas and agriculture and doing various surveys to access applicability of policies. Post which he has been asked to work even on the upcoming parliamentary elections due to his work and dedication.