Monthly Archives: January 2018
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Telugu man in top Army post
Lt. Gen. Yenduru Venkata Krishna Mohan, senior most serving Lieutenant General amongst three services (Army, Navy and Air Force) from both Telugu states, has been appointed him as General Officer Commanding 9 Corps.
Presently, he is serving as the Assistant Chief Integrated Defence Staff (Joint Operations) at HQ Integrated Defence Staff, New Delhi.
Conferred with the Sena Medal and Vishisht Seva Medal.
He is an alumnus of Korukonda Sainik School, Andhra Pradesh National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla, Pune and was commissioned into 7th Battalion of 11th Gorkha Rifles in 1981 and had served in varied terrains like Siachen Glacier and Indo-China border at Sikkim, a press release said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Special Correspondent / Hyderabad – January 10th, 2018
His voice, a capsule of tribal histories
Ramachandraiah is probably the last such singer left in A.P. and Telangana
Sakine Ramachandraiah could easily have been awarded honorary doctorate by any university. An unlettered man from Koonavaram village of Manuguru mandal of Bhadradri Kothagudem district, Ramachandraiah has oral histories of the Koya tribe on the tip of his tongue.
One only has to mention the story to have it cascade effortlessly from his vocal chambers, in Telugu as well as Koya language.
Belonging to the ‘Doli’ sub-division of the Koya tribe, which has been traditionally ordained with the duty of reciting the tribe’s clan histories, Ramachandraiah is probably the last such singer left in the two states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
“Some times, I cross the State border to perform in Chhattisgarh, where people want the songs in Koya language,” Ramachandraiah says.
He sings at marriages, at funerals, and he always sings at the biennial Medaram Jathara also known as the ‘Sammakka Saralamma Jathara’, which is touted as the world’s largest repeat congregation of tribal communities. The Medaram Jathara is to be held from January 31 to February 3 this year, at Eturunagaram of Jayashankar Bhupalpally district.
Gazette
The Doli community is described as ‘professional beggars’ among Koyas by the Godavari District Gazette of 1896. Though their duties are priest-like and along with ‘Oddis’— the superior priest class — they can be classified as the ‘literate’ in the tribe, their status is still considered ‘inferior’.
Doli men sing oral histories based on the ‘Padige’s or pictorial scrolls inherited by various communities over centuries.
“Earlier, Doli families used to live in a hamlet called ‘Soppala’.
Now, nobody lives there. Few are left who can recite oral histories as accurately as Ramachandraiah,” says Jayadhir Tirumala Rao, academic and researcher of tribal communities.
Prof. Tirumala Rao is spearheading a project to document the oral history of ‘Sammakka-Saralamma’ as told by Ramachandraiah, and he vouches that the story, if fleshed out from the myth it is enmeshed in, could substantially aid historical research.
“Sammakka-Saralamma story is about the war waged against the Kakatiya dynasty by tribal women who challenged king Prataparudra when he had levied tax on them for the tanks he had got constructed in their forests. The Koya tribe had then lived on hunting-gathering, and never cultivated any land.
So, the king sought to send outsiders into the forest for cultivation, which was the last straw on the camel’s back. This story comes out very clearly from the song recited by Ramachandraiah,” Prof. Tirumala Rao says.
Apart from ‘Sammakka-Saralamma’, the balladeer sings the stories of tribal warriors such as Gari Kamaraju, Pagididda Raju, Irama Raju, Gaadi Raju, Bapanamma, Musalamma, Nagulamma, Sadalamma and others. He also knows and recites the stories behind the endogamous tribal sub-divisions and their surnames. “Now, nobody wants to sing the stories. Even my own son refuses to follow the tradition,” Ramachandraiah laments.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Telangana / by Swathi Vadlamudi / January 10th, 2018
An NRI doctor nurtures his roots
He now focusses on telemedicine centre in native village
In 1959, Dr. Kakarala Prasad, son of K. Bhaskara Rao and Venkata Subbayamma, passed out of the ZP High School Vennanapudi, which hardly had basic infrastructure, with a Secondary School Leaving Certificate.
Fifty-nine years later, on Monday, Dr. Prasad, a native of Ramapuram (now Venkata Raghava Puram, also birthplace of legendary actor Akkineni Nageswara Rao) was at the same school in the neighbouring village interacting with the students and the staff. It is now a “Success School” and offers Telugu and English mediums of instruction. The school is all praise for the veteran doctor because of his contribution to its development over three decades.
The school has buildings for classrooms, kitchen and laboratories and even a newly inaugurated cycle stand developed with his contributions.
It is the first school in the State to get G+1 building with the contribution of Dr. Prasad under Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Janmabhumi programme in 1998. The school, named after his father, was inaugurated by Mr. Naidu.
Much before that, Dr. Prasad, who has been practising in the U.S. for the past 41 years as paediatrician, gave away his five-acre land and house in Ramapuram for a clinic developed by him. The clinic was later upgraded as Primary Health Centre by the government and is still the only healthcare solution for many villages nearby.
“This is an addiction. Once you do something for your village you feel like doing more and more of such activities,” Dr. Prasad sums up about his service. He also funded road development and sanitation projects in Ramapuram.
At 74, he came all the way from the U.S. to visit the PHC to inquire about the infrastructure required for setting up a telemedicine centre.
“It was my friend Bhanu Prasad who introduced me to the joy of helping others. When we were studying in Vijayawada, we gave free food for engineering students. Now we [friends’ circle] are running a charitable trust in his name that has a fund of ₹50 lakh,” Dr. Prasad says.
“In a bid to give back to my village, I paved the way for the clinic. Now I am going to meet the Health Minister to seek help for a new building for the Kakinada government hospital which has become congested. The alumnus of the Rangaraya Medical College (RMC) are ready to fund half of the ₹40-crore project,” Dr. Prasad, who graduated in medicine from the RMC, says.
Dr. Prasad is also involved in philanthropical activities in Ohio where he has been living for the past several decades.
Apart from voluntarily teaching paediatrics at the University of Toledo, Dr. Prasad also provides scholarships to students there.
His services were recognised by the Telugu Association of North America (TANA) recently and he received the prestigious Dr. Guthikonda Ravindranath Award for Community Service through initiatives like Adopt-a-village, Adopt-a-child and others.
His wife Uma Devi and children also joined him in the development of the village. The PHC in Ramapuram does not have a resident doctor since long and telemedicine centre is seen as a solution to the problem.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by Tharun Boda / Venkata Parhava Puram (Krishna District) / January 09th, 2018
Ongole school bags British Council award
The city-based NextGen International School(NGIS) bagged the British Council’s International School Award (ISA).
Students of the school did seven pre-approved projects of the British Council in collaboration with selected schools abroad to win the ISA and its accreditation for a period of three years from 2017, NGIS director Sreekanth.K. told reporters here on Friday.
School principal R.L.V.Ramesh said the projects in which NGIS students participated related to water, disaster management, transportation, local self government, etiquette and social reformers of 20th and 21st century.
The ISA is a benchmarking scheme that accredits schools having an outstanding level of support for nurturing global citizenship in young people and enriching teaching and learning among students of schools in 31 countries worldwide. The aim was to build leadership among students and foster team building, innovation, and project management, they added.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Vijayawada / by Special Correspondent Ongole / December 23rd, 2017
Is this the fabled ‘ghost ship’that’s believed to have sunk over 300 years ago killing 400 on board?
Once upon a time there was a huge steam ship filled with passengers leaving a quaint town. But, the ill-fated ship sank with all of its 400 passengers on board. Ever since, the location where the ship sank in the sea has been haunted, with the souls of the gloomy, dead passengers haunting whoever passes by at night. They moan and take out their anger on the living, begging for attention and some relief from their after-life.
Thus goes the legend of a mysterious wreck in the Bay of Bengal popular among the fishing community of Visakhapatnam. And till recently, the wreck was nothing more than an apparition; a bed-time tale told to scare toddlers. Or so it was believed. But Vizag-based scuba diver, Balaram Naidu claims he’s discovered the remnants of that doomed ship lying in the Bay of Bengal.
“I don’t want to reveal where the wreck is yet, but the fishing community here has always had many interesting tales to tell about it,” says Balaram Naidu, owner of an adventure sports firm in the city.
From the pictures of the remnants of the said wreck that Balaram shared with Vizag Times, one can see various parts of the ship scattered around. “The shaft, motor, furnace and the rest of the main body are intact. The keel, decks and other parts of the ship have spread all over the place. The furnace even holds beautiful aqua life in it and is filled with fishes, eels and turtles,” explains Balaram.
But how did the adventure enthusiast even find the wreck in the first place? “We have been struggling to find wrecks in the sea for three years now and been taking the help of the fishing community to find them. But they can’t dive deep into the water, so they point out possible wreck sites to us and we dive to see if they’re actually there. We learnt about this site from the fishermen’s tales. We found the debris during our first few dives and it took us a while to find the wreck too,” he says, elated.
While the mention of the eerie wreck brings out excitement in Balaram, it incites fear in the fishing community. The fishermen are dead sure that this is the sunken ship that their forefathers warned them about. “I don’t know how old the ship is and when it sunk there. But generations of our children have grown up listening to tales of how 400 passengers on board died when this ship sank. I heard the story from my father, who heard the story from my grandfather and so on. My father is 85-years-old now, I think the ship sunk 300 years ago maybe. But this is the first time I’ve heard of someone actually finding it,” says Satti, a fisherman.
But why does the ship-wreck incite fear in these fishermen? “It’s not just me, anyone who has fished around that area will tell you that they feel scared to venture there. Because a lot of us who fished in that area at night, have felt someone hitting us on our backs. That’s why we avoid venturing there at night. Even when we do go that side, we go in large numbers and prefer not to catch fish there.”
Balaram however wants to find the ship’s origins and believes it sunk while it was leaving Vizag harbour. “The shaft is towards Vizag, this could mean that it sunk while it was leaving the harbour. I want to find out more details about the ship and I’m hoping its records can be found at the court. They will hopefully have the navigation records.”
For Balaram the finding of a coral in the sea few weeks back and now, the wreck just reinstates the fact that Vizag has the potential to be an attractive dive site. “In fact, it could be the best dive site in India,” he says. “Scuba divers love reef diving and wreck diving, and the latter is something a lot of divers opt for because it’s exciting.”
Previously too, Balaram Naidu had told Vizag Times that he is planning to present a proposal to the tourism department to develop Vizag as a wreck diving destination. If the proposal does indeed materialise, then civilians would be able to access the wreck of PNS Ghazi, that only divers of Indian Navy are privy to so far.
“I know for a fact that the remains of Ghazi lie 30 meters deep in the ocean and that the debris is entangled in fishing nets,” he says. Apart from the wreck of PNS Ghazi, and now this steam ship, the debris of a goods ship lies at the continental beach near Dolphin Hill.
“I will soon submit a proposal imploring the Tourism Department to turn the ship wreck we discovered now and PNS Ghazi into wreck diving sites. It can transform the tourism scenario not just in Vizag but all of India,” he sums it up.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Visakhapatnam News / by Neeshita Nyayapati / TNN / January 06th, 2018
A Korean ‘township’ coming up in Anantapur
Builders cash in on rising accommodation needs of KIA Motors officials
A “mini South Korean township” is coming up in Anantapur town, about 60 km from the under-construction automobile manufacturing facility of South Korean car major, KIA Motors, near Penukonda.
With the work on the KIA factory on the outskirts of Penukonda going on at a fast pace, the arrival of Korean nationals to oversee the work at the site has increased, and so has the demand for accommodation. Signboards in Korean language have sprung up offering such lodging.
“We have no suitable facilities here for foreigners, especially senior and middle management of KIA. Penukonda doesn’t offer good accommodation choices, and the offices at the construction site aren’t good enough to house them,” said a senior Indian official of KIA who did not wish to be identified.
In the initial days, officials were put up in guest houses, government and private, at Puttaparthy and Anantapur. But with more South Korean nationals coming, builders with constructed buildings on the outskirts of Anantapur started to offer apartment complexes as guest houses.
“We cashed in on the opportunity of housing the Korean nationals who would eventually want to bring their families and settle down close to the factory and the nearest city. We then started our new venture at Ramnagar and decided to even advertise in the Korean language,” said Prashant Mallem, who even employed a Korean national as a facilitator-cum-marketing agent for his apartments.
It is estimated that 30 flats on the outskirts have been bought and occupied by Korean nationals, while almost a similar number have booked apartments.
“Once the assembly line installation starts, a lot of South Koreans will be at work and need accommodation for a few months at least,” said Sung Min, a South Korean national, who works with a builder in Anantapur.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Andhra Pradesh / by V.K. Rakesh Reddy / Anantapur – January 06th, 2018