An automated voice calls out "Swagatham" at the entrance of the Pookkottukavu panchayat office in Palakkad. It's not chaste Malayalam, but the people who turn up in office to avail various services halt in front of the screen from which the voice emerges. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the panchayat now has an AI assistant created by 20-year-old Abhinav, a local resident and young innovator.

Abhinav, a BCA student at Universal College, Mannarkkad, was approached by the panchayath vice-president Harisankar to develop something that could guide people to benefit from various services offered by the panchayat. Despite rolling out K-Smart, an attempt by the Kerala government to improve efficiency and create a unified e-governance platform, most people unfamiliar with the technology still tend to seek assistance from panchayath staff, and if they are already busy with work, this leads to a delay in service delivery.

Harisankar had taken note of the state's first AI student, which Abhinav created for St Albert's LP School, Ariyoor. Harisankar had requested him to do something similar to improve the functioning of the panchayat.

In just five days, Abhinav built an AI chatbot that guides citizens and helps them with their queries. Using a model similar to ChatGPT, Abhinav's AI bot uses keywords to identify questions and queries, then provides answers from its vast database.

Apart from guidance on procedures, it also provides various datasets of the panchayat to research scholars and others seeking the same. If the desired dataset is not available, it can be requested, following which the dataset will be rolled out in the next update. By rolling out continuous updates to meet the growing needs of the locality, Abhinav hopes to eventually expand the project's scope.

This was not Abhinav's first attempt at building technologies that improve society. Having been interested in the field since class 9, he had previously created an app for the panchayat called "Pookkottukavu panchayath" that offered the same functionalities as the K-smart app, an e-governance initiative of the local self-government department. However, this app was rolled back once the K-Smart was released.

Abhinav did not grow up in a tech-savvy home. His father, V Ramadas, is a businessman in Chennai, and his Mother, C Dhanya, works as a Photoshop technician back home. Yet he and his team went on to win the Young Innovator's Award at the state level. Despite their unfamiliarity with technology, his parents never held back on supporting him, making him the first techie in the family.

However, Abhinav says that India, more specifically Kerala, does not offer an environment conducive to tech innovators. He hopes this will change, allowing him to tap into his full potential. 

Although Abhinav was initially uninspired by the applicability of AI in a panchayat office, he now sees applying technology to improve society as a defining aspect of his persona. He is currently working on technology that may help prevent election fraud. Using fingerprints, the technology would detect the linked IDs and verify the voter's identity. 

"Man lies, machines don't", Abhinav says, hoping to apply his tool to eliminate vote theft and fraud.