Hyderabad has a Sunday brunch with TEDx

Hyderabad: Hyderabad TEDx was held on Sunday and the crowd was treated to thought-provoking talks by people who are at forefront of innovation, nationwide. 

 

The event also featured Ritu Karidhal, the deputy director of the Mangalyaan mission and IAS officer Armstrong Pame, who built a 100-km road without the government’s help.

 

Known as the Miracle Man, this IAS officer from Nagaland built a 100-kilometre road in Manipur — connecting it with Assam and Nagaland — with the help of the citizens and without any help from the administration. 

 

Even the cash came from locals’ pockets. Building a motorable road all by themselves might have seemed a tad reckless or ambitious at first, but Mr Pame says the citizens worked together to make the crucial highway link a reality.

 

“Many villagers came forward to help. I then went back and pooled in whatever my family and I could contribute,” he said.

 

Another woman said she didn’t have enough money but she would help workers with food. Soon, others pitched in. The road was built and inaugurated in the February, 2013,” he said. The group then went on to build a hospital as well. 

 

Mr Pame believes this could be a trendsetter. He said that there were five important points that led to the success.  One is to have no strings attached and have no ulterior motives. 

 

“We did not do this for publicity... in fact, I rejected several media interviews initially,” he said. Ensuring the commitment stayed till the end, starting the initiative with self and having integrity and ethics helped the project be a success. “We ensured the acknowledgement of everyone who were a part of this project. 

 

He continued, “I received a lot of messages every day saying how people take me as an inspiration and how similar projects have already started in various towns. Also, we should work towards finding technological solutions to our social problems.”

 

Another speaker, Ritu Karidhal, the deputy director of Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) recalled how ISRO had functioned during its earliest days (the early 80s) — with limited resources and when sounding rockets and the APPLE satellite were carried on bicycles and bullock carts. 

 

On being asked why mars was chosen, she said, “Because, there are many unanswered questions about Mars. We wanted to check if the Red Planet could reveal anything about Earth’s past or its future. It is believed that billions of years ago, Mars had water and as the years passed by, Earth became a planet that supported life while Mars couldn’t make it. We wanted to do research which improves quality of life on Earth.”

 

Ms Karidhal also revealed details about MoM. “We had to build a system that was capable of self-diagnosis, self-recovery and with the ability to execute instructions. It should be noted that out of 50 Space missions so far, only 21 have been successful and none of them were first attempts. For MoM, major hardware came from previous missions but the software was entirely new — with a thousand lines of code written, tested and verified in just 10 months. We had a time constraint once in every 26 months, Earth is aligned in such a way to Mars that a journey uses minimum fuel. If we don’t execute Mars missions during this time period, we will have to wait 26 more months.