Keynote to examine human rights, social justice in India

A lecture by Dr. Ravi Kuchimanchi, who will discuss the work of Association for India’s Development (AID), an organization he founded to address human rights and social justice in India, will be presented on Friday, Nov. 2, at 7:15 p.m., in the Williams Center Multipurpose Room.

The talk, which is free and open to the public, is the keynote address of the American Physical Society’s 119th Topical Symposium on the Contributions of Physical Sciences to the Welfare of Society that the Department of Physics is hosting.

Dr. Kuchimanchi established AID as a graduate student. After completing postdoctoral work, Kuchimanchi began to focus his attention on human rights and social justice issues in India that included renewable energy, sustainable livelihoods and struggles of marginalized people. It became clear to him that a laborer earning a dollar a day lived in darkness, not because of an electricity bill, but due to the large bribe needed for the initial connection.

AID, which tackles root causes such as corruption and exploitation rather than symptoms of poverty, has mobilized nearly 1,000 volunteers and raises $2 million annually.

Kuchimanchi earned an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, in 1985 and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland in 1995.