Meet

Akarsh Sriramoju

Childhood Years

Akarsh Sriramoju was born in Mancherial, Telangana. His Father (Ravi Sriramoju) was in the Pharmacy business and founded the well-known polyclinic in the town called ‘Swathi Medical’; his mother (Anitha Sriramoju) is a homemaker.  Akarsh’s family belonged to the middle class, who strongly held on to their principles at highs and lows alike. Most of Akarsh’s schooling was in the districts of Adilabad and Mancherial. When Akarsh was in high school, his family moved to Hyderabad. During his schooling years, Akarsh found the conventional schooling system to have its prime focus on rote learning and a theoretical approach. Thus, from a very young age, Akarsh has developed a disinterest in classroom setup and has begun aspiring to bring impactful change to the Indian education system. Throughout these years, Akarsh has spent most of his time at home, rather than at school, acquiring knowledge through books, teaching himself Math and Sciences, indulging in art and craftwork, and most importantly, knowing how our society is built and how it operates.  At the same time, the people of Telangana, in undivided Andhra Pradesh, were fighting for state bifurcation for equality in opportunities and long-lost identity. While learning about the people’s struggle for the separation of state, Akarsh’s interest in the Telangana Movement and Politics as a whole sparked.

Engineering Days

During his Engineering days, Akarsh developed a broader perspective of problems faced by our state and country.  As an aspiring engineer, Akarsh has yet again identified issues in the engineering education system. This was fueled by his childhood ambition to make the education system more impactful. With this fuel driving his purpose, Akarsh has aimed to set up a company to solve this problem. To establish a foundation for the same, Akarsh has worked on a 6-months long,  innovative project regarding engineering education at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay. While ambitiously working on this project, he realized that change-makers in any country are not just politicians but also entrepreneurs who are striving to take the nation’s progress a step ahead through innovation while creating employability. With this passion, Akarsh designed a pedagogy for Electronics and Communication Engineering aiming at transforming the curriculum by integrating Liberal Arts into Engineering education. Akarsh designed this student-centric pedagogy by thoroughly studying the psychology of learning. 

Experiences at the university

Post his bachelors, to further solve the problem of Engineering Education, Akarsh has decided to take a deep dive into the Psychology of learning and Cognitive Science, thus joining the University of Hyderabad and enrolling in the Neural and Cognitive Sciences Post graduation program. During these two years of master’s, the politically active student body and whole university atmosphere influenced Akarsh’s opinions on how crucial it is to bring a change from the grass-root level. Akarsh’s interest in politics once again ignited, regaining political consciousness. At this phase, Akarsh could see that despite being the largest democracy in the world, with every passing year, our country is becoming increasingly polarized with hate speech and crimes.  All this while, Akarsh viewed societal change from the lens of education. He believed that an impactful education system could positively change our country. However, he realized that many factors at multiple levels influence systemic change and progress, such as society, culture, economy, and policy-making, which are all equally crucial in initiating a change. This realization has inspired a transition in his thought process from entrepreneurship to politics and policymaking. 

This ignition of wanting to bring political change further led to a turning point in his life during the October 2020 floods in Hyderabad, an extreme event not seen in the last 100 years is an example of encroachment of lakes, poor urban infrastructure, and unpreparedness. This incident shocked him that sewage systems are still managed poorly after more than half a decade of Telangana State’s formation and supposed development. In the following months, Akarsh took the first step in his political journey, taking an active part in politics, understanding problems faced by people in his locality, and working for a community-based development approach. Akarsh has been a resident of Serilingampally for the past 15 years. He has noticed the problems faced by the community very closely. This is one of the reasons why he aims for community-level sustainable development with a solution-focused approach. A solution-focused approach is more goal-oriented and futuristic.

Present

In 76 years of independence and eight years of Telangana State formation, no remarkable change has been seen in our political, social, and economic affairs. Akarsh aims to bring change from the grass-root level by working on effective policy-making practices in the state. Akarsh envisions sustainable development at the community, state, and national levels to meet the needs of our societies and country as a whole without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Akarsh believes that, in a democracy, it should not just be the elite that has access to politics, but every citizen should be politically active. 

Akarsh firmly believed that Politics is not only for those aspiring to become politicians but also for anyone interested in the country’s welfare. Thus, Akarsh started his political journey to reinstate true democracy, where every citizen takes an active part in decision-making. With knowledge, experience and exposure gained from Psychology, Technology and Policy Making, Akarsh has taken a step forward to establish a participatory democracy and decided to contest in the 2023 Telangana assembly elections by representing the Serilingampally constituency and its people. 

With this purpose, Akarsh started a campaign aiming at grass-root level change called

Samagra Serilingampally 

“A strong step forward now to create an Innovation city,

Where the people -Think, Experiment, Learn and Grow”.

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