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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