About

My latest book on Amazon: A crisis called Farming

My first book on Amazon: You, Me & A Story

These two short films were based on stories from my book. In an effort to cteate more awareness, i scripted and produced these two short films

My first short film – Missing

My second short film – Photo Frame

My interview with Ravish Kumar on Prime Time – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ur5g3W-Li8

I would like to describe myself as a son, a husband, a father to two beautiful kid. My simple belief is that my responsibility towards my society is as important as my responsibility towards my kids and my family.

I feel extremely privileged to be living the life i’m living but i also realize that I owe a great deal to the society that I came from. No i’m not saying this just for saying – as a simple example, if the banks hadn’t give me the educational loan i wouldn’t have come abroad to pursue my higher studies.

With this belief and my obligation towards my society, i try to do whatever little i can to create the opportunities for those who do not have them.

List of activities: I’ve been involved in volunteering for more than 18 years now. And during the course of these 18 years, I’ve taken several projects at an individual level and have been able to implement them successfully with the help and support of my friends and the extended friends on social media.

There are many others which I probably didn’t list here but I’m hoping this would be good enough 🙂

• Farmers: For the past several years, I’ve been raising funds to help the victims of the farmer suicides, especially from the Vidarbha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and also reached out to farmers across several other states. Funds to the tune of Rs 1.5 to 2 crores were raised in all these years to help with several initiatives – all thanks to the generous donors
  • I along with a few friends have even started a 501c3 organization 2 years ago called i4Farmers to create a platform where individuals can contribute to help the cause of the farmers.
  • I run a weekly internet radio show called “Kisan Ki baat” or “Rythu Maata” where i talk to the farmers and bring their stories to the audience, primarily on social media to sensitize and socialize their concerns
  • I encourage friends and family to directly buy from the farmers. I have a target of motivating at least 50 of my friends to do the same.
  • I have helped raised funds to the tune of 1 crore over several years in supporting various causes from helping the farm widows to rewarding farmers for their best practices to organizing farmer field schools etc.
  • I also analyse the govt. data and create reports and write for factly.in (a fact based website) and also on my blog in order to create awareness and help bring awareness

• Weavers: Thanks to Palle Srujana’s efforts to bring the rural innovations to the forefront, i got introduced to Mallesham, Asu machine inventor from Nalagonda district. I along with my friends was able to help the weavers project whereby we tried to work on a model to provide the weavers with direct access to the market and in the process helping them maximize their profits. This project was taken up for more than 3 years.

• Internet Radio called NRI Samay: An internet based radio that brings the untold stories, unheard voices and unsung heroes to the forefront. This is entirely volunteer based and have been part of the team for the past 3 years and still going strong. I interview almost 3-4 guests every month on topics ranging from gender issues to the farming issues to rural innovations to Ind/Pak relations.

• RTI: I’ve used RTI and tried to promote in my own way. I’ve conducted awareness campaigns and also had a relatively successful initiative to call the MP’s when the RTI was under threat. I called that “RTI Call-A-Thon” where I had called about 150 or more MP’s to raise these issues to them.

• Sandy cleanup efforts: Queens, NY was the worst hit due by the sandy storm. This happened in Oct 2011. For the next 1 year, I went there once every month, along with friends who were interested in joining me. All in all, I went there almost 13 times and have helped with setting up community gardens to cleaning up the damaged houses to fixing the floors to laying the electric wiring’s etc

• Bhopal Gas Victims: I’ve been a long time supporter of the campaign to help the Bhopal Gas Victims. In the year 2014 i fasted on every Tuesday for the entire year. I did this to create awareness on social media and as part of this, i would share stories of the survivors or bring out facts about the disaster on every Tuesday. More importantly this was to show solidarity and support the people on the ground demanding justice

• Campaigns: There have been various occasions where I either organized and/or participated in campaigns to help support the causes in India. Anti corruption movements, raise voice against caste based discrimination’s, protest Soni Sori’s arrests etc

• Volunteering with various organizations: Over the course of the past 15 years, I’ve been volunteering with various organizations and I try to help out in whichever way possible. These activities involved creating/maintaining websites to organizing fund raising concerts to awareness campaigns to bringing project proposals and executing/monitoring projects on behalf of organizations

• Supporting kids educations: With the help of engineering friends, i helped take care of 5 students with their education needs for the past 4 years or more.

• I recently published a book called “You, Me and a Story“ – an impromptu story telling book meant for both parents and kids –

Volunteer activities also helped me friends several friends, farmers, NGOs , organizations and also helped with

• Bank of America – volunteer award – 2017
• Telugu NRI of the year – 2018
• Basha memorial award for volunteering – 2015

A few articles

• https://english.sakshi.com/telangana/2018/08/12/sakshi-excellence-awards-2017-2
• https://www.dropbox.com/s/pbkrbe7txv2og8u/HansArticleOnSuriNRISamay.pdf?dl=0
• http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/nris-join-campaign-to-keep-political-parties-under-rti/article4999159.ece
• http://www.theweekendleader.com/Headlines/1254/nri-family-skips-b%27day-bash,-donates-$4000-for-vidarbha-widows.html
• http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/nris-join-campaign-to-keep-political-parties-under-rti/article4999159.ece
• http://www.thebetterindia.com/23841/us-based-indian-helping-indian-farmers-vidarbha-suicides/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.in/milaap/5-nris-who-led-change-in-_b_8927214.html
• http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/01/26/indians-extraordinary-thi_n_6545512.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4HmqQyNQYM
• http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/succour-from-a-distant-land/article8246669.ece
• http://www.thebetterindia.com/44301/c-cube-calling-club-for-cgnet-swara/