While Indian Institute of Madras is very well-known as a leading Engineering institution in India, many people have very restricted idea about socially relevant projects the students and the faculty have been working on, often supported by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) grants provided by the corporates.

With the help of the CSR grants, IIT Madras is solving real-world problems, may it be the issue of lake restoration to solid waste management, from basic rural healthcare access to challenges faced by millions of Indians with disabilities.

In the words of Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi –Director, IIT Madras, ‘In academia, we do research to understand phenomena better, discover new laws. These are the part of global efforts which leads to an increasingly better understanding of the world around us. But there’s also another kind of research where we do work that has a fairly quick and significant impact on society which is enabled by the CSR grants.’

^{(source: IIT Madras youtube channel)}

Lake Restoration Project-

For example, Prof. Indumathi Nambi –Civil Engineering faculty was able to start her work on lake restoration in Chennai because of the CSR funding.

‘With Urbanisation, we encroach upon lakes, the water does not get stored and there’s huge run off that’s generated during rains and we see floods everywhere.’ –said Prof. Indumathi.

Lake restoration is a huge project comprising of 5 Lakes. Because of IIT Madras’ involvement and technical assessment that went on for a year, a lot of investment that could’ve unnecessarily gone towards construction of ground water recharge structure was saved.

^{Lake Restoration activity undertaken by Prof. Indumathi Nambi}

Integrated Solid waste management-

Similarly, the involvement of IIT Madras had a significant impact on solid waste management project in rural India that was executed by Prof. Ligy Philip –Dean, Planning, Civil Engineering faculty.

Concerning the project, Prof. Ligy said- ‘When we talk about rural India, solid waste management is very poor and if you are not maintaining your solid waste or wastewater, your water resources will not be clean at all. Usually, it takes 30 to 40 days to get good composting but we can reduce the time to 20 days.’

The work on integrated waste management was done so well that the corporate was highly enthused pursuing the initiative for the next village as well. The corporates wish to return again and again to expand their work in this field.

Disability Accessibility Device-

^{Disability Accessibility Device designed for Indian Scenario by Prof. Sujatha Srinivasan & her students}

The CSR funding from corporate helped Prof. Sujata Srinivasan –Head R2D2 Lab to focus on disable accessibility devices, designed specifically for Indian Scenario.  According to Prof. Sujata, ‘There are 30% of people in India alone who suffer from some of the other kind of locomotive disability and less than 5% of them have access to assistive devices.’

The standing wheelchair project, undertaken by Prof. Sujata and her students is almost over. Neo-motion- a startup co-founded by her in the Lab itself is undertaking long term trials that are scheduled for production.

Additionally, she says- ‘The flexibility is what I love most about CSR funding, which I think makes a big difference.’

Rural Healthcare Access-

Prof. Mohansankar –Head, Healthcare Innovation Centre (HTIC) suggested –"Cataract surgery has become quite affordable, especially in last 10-20 years but even today there’s 40%-50% backlog for cataract surgeries in rural areas and that’s a huge number."

Prof. Mohansankar and his team used the CSR grant to develop mobile cataract surgery units. It has done almost 12000 surgeries in over 120 villages.

Artificial Intelligence-

CSR funds are also enabling IIT Madras to focus on fundamental areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Prof. B. Ravindran –Head, Robert Bosch Centre commented-"People are willing to fund the next big project in AI but the horizons people are looking to do this kind of funding is extremely small. AI is naturally a fast-moving field and if you don’t have a fast movers advantage, you are going to lag in the market, your clientele is going to shrink is going to shrink significantly. So, if you are going to be driven by the kind of fundraising, you can’t explore deeper questions. Having something like this which has no immediate deliverable goal but leans more towards capacity building and improving the quality of fundamental research is going to have long term dividends.

Another meaningful impact of CSR funding to IIT Madras has been boosting the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem."

Many students from IIT Madras aren’t becoming job seekers; instead, they are becoming more of job providers by starting their own companies. In 5-6 years of incubator’s existence, 160 companies have been incubated so far and collectively offered jobs to 2500 people.

According to Ms. Tamaswati Ghosh –CEO, IIT Madras Incubation Cell, "The startup ecosystem at IIT Madras is one of the deep technological startup hubs in the country. We have the majority of companies working in the engineering sector, socially relevant sectors etc."

Beyond this incubation, CSR funding has also enabled competitions like ‘carbon zero challenge’-aimed at encouraging tech start-ups to work in the areas of green energy. Funding of 5 lacs per team is allotted and around 25 teams are funded to build working prototypes. IIT Madras is working in all the key social areas- From nanotechnology based water purifiers to solar energy to technological education where corporates can collaborate for sustainable and scalable impacts.

Today, it’s possible for corporates to pick from the available research work done by the faculty or corporates or IIT Madras can work together to create a custom design CSR solution to invest in technology-driven scalable solutions that have longer lasting impacts as well as the multiplier effect.

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Impact-Story is a series on development and CSR interventions leading to some impacts on the ground. If you have a project, innovation or intervention that has changed the lives of a few people or a community, please share a brief note at csr@ngobox.org. Our Team will get back to you after validating the information for a detailed coverage. For more information, please visit  indiacsrsummit.in