Whose dorm is greenest of them all? - a competition at IIM-A

AHMEDABAD: Kuldeep Singh, a first-year student of Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) is living away from home for the first time. Until now, the least of his worries was leaving the fan on in his room when he left.
But for the last two months, Kuldeep and his friends in dorm 12 do not shy away from checking their floormate if he leaves his light on while walking out.After all, they have a competition of the Most Energy-Efficient Dorm' to win.
Nature Club - Prakriti, a special interest group of students on IIM-A campus to spread awareness about energy efficiency, has launched a competition amongst the 24 hostel wings, popularly called dorms, on energy efficiency. Over 600 PGP, Agri-business Management (PGP-ABM) and Fellowship Programme in Management (FPM) students live here.
"Not only do we try to check our own wastage, but our neighbours as well. As a community, we have become concerned," said Singh.
"We launched the competition for the last quarter of the year. It started on October 1. We collect monthly data of units of electricity used in the dorms. We study meter readings of individual rooms and the collective reading of the dorm. The competition ends on December 31 after which we will average out the units used and see which dorm used the least energy," said co-ordinator of Nature Club, G Vinamra
"Last year we had done poster presentations and communicated through emails the importance of energy efficiency and global warming, but we could not measure the effect of those efforts. Thus we thought of introducing something where the students can participate and practice. The data collected by us has shown a considerable amount of decrease in the energy consumption and we are very glad about that," Vinamra said.