Monthly Archives: August 2019
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Adibhatla’s birth anniversary celebrations from today
The celebrations will be organised jointly by Narayanadas Sishya Prasishya Sangham and Annamayya Parivaramu, Hyderabad.
Vijayawada :
The five-day birth anniversary celebrations of Harikatha Pitamaha Adibhatla Narayana Das, considered the creator of modern school of Harikatha, a unique art of storytelling in Telugu, will be held at the Sri Seetharama Kalyana Mandapam in Sivalayam temple in Satyanarayanapuram at Vijayawada, beginning Sunday.
The celebrations will be organised jointly by Narayanadas Sishya Prasishya Sangham and Annamayya Parivaramu, Hyderabad. Adibhatla Narayana Das was born on August 31, 1864 in Ajjada, a tiny village in Vizianagaram district. Das is also a musician, dancer, poet and added a new dimension to Telugu and Sanskrit literature by his Harikathas, Prabhandas (semi-historical anecdotes of famous persons), translations and Avadhanams (improvisation of poems using specific themes, metres or words).
According to YV Krishnaiah, the coordinator of Narayanadas Jayanthi programme and founder of Hyderabad-based Annamayya Parivaramu, Adibhatla was a cultural hero, who brought name and fame to
Vizianagaram with cultural events, then cultural capital of the State.
His dancing and abhinaya (art of expression) were exquisite and even earned praise of ‘Nightingale of India’ Sarojini Naidu, who witnessed Adibhatla’s Harikatha in the All India Congress Mahasabha held in Kakinada in 1923.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / ome> Cities>Vijayawada / by Express News Service / August 25th, 2019
New sowing machine developed at Rekulakunta research station
Diker helps in arresting soil erosion and achieving water conservation: scientist
Here is an innovative idea conceived by a scientist and agriculture engineer Nalabolu Kishore, who dreams of arresting soil erosion and achieving water conservation at one go by utilising his newly developed ‘ANGRAU Diker’, while doing its job of sowing.
The newly-developed Diker can be attached to any existing tractor and seed planter for sowing groundnut, red gram, castor, bajra, cotton, chickpea or korra millets or any other crop that requires wide-spaced sowing.
At an experimental sowing demonstration on the premises of Agriculture Research Station, Rekulakunta in Anantapur district, the Diker showed the ease with which four rows of seed insertion could be done with dikes created between them at a 32 cm gap with a dike (depression or hole) dimension of 15 cm width 15 cm depth.
Mr. Kishore explaining the benefits of the Diker to The Hindu, said each depression in the field had the capacity to hold 500 ml of rainwater and 1,12,000 dikes created in 1 hectare, the land will have a holding capacity of 60,000 litres taking into account evaporation losses. “This water in small puddles will be available close to the root system of the crop, providing maximum advantage. In groundnut crop, the pods do not penetrate down beyond 10 cm, hence this was ideal depth for it,” he observed.
Four bent arrow-shaped iron rods attached a rotating shaft get dragged by a tractor, that has a seed planter attached to it to introduce seed at a predetermined gap between the rows. The farmer needs to just fill the seed box and do the entire activity at one go single handed, saving expensive manual labour. Guided by Principal Scientist and Head ARS Rekulakunta R. Veeraraghavaiah, Mr. Kishore has taken up this three-year project of developing this implemsent, that will undergo several changes depending on the outcome from yield and ease of operation etc.
“To optimise its use, we have come up with having several variants of Diker to meet the needs of each and every crop, while bushes are fixed to wheel holding the ploughing arrows, the spacing between them and the depth to which they should dig into the soil can be adjusted,” he explained.
This Diker helps in curbing runoff of fertile topsoil during a rain, arresting water flow and conserving it very close to the roots and was most useful for all dryland crops. These dikes are useful in in situ water conservation and are now being termed as micro farm ponds.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> States> Andhra Pradesh / by Ramesh Susarla / Anantapur – August 26th, 2019
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Memorial for Prakasam Pantulu long overdue
His island villa in Ongole, house in Vinodarayunipalem and Vijayotsavam Stupa paint a picture of neglect
Statesman Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu’s island villa in Ongole, his house in Vinodarayunipalem and the Salt Satyagraha site near Devarampadu are forgotten for most of the year except on the great man’s birth and death anniversaries.
Little has been done to convert these structures into memorials except for the occassional lip service twice a year on his birth and death anniversaries. His admirers feel that building the memorials would be a fitting tribute to the great freedom fighter and politician who earned the epithet of ‘Andhra Kesari’ for his opposition to British rule.
The ‘Vijayotsavam Stupa’ in Devarampadu village, built in 1935 to mark the launch of Prakasam Pantulu’s Salt Satyagraha and unveiled by Babu Rajendra Prasad, also cries for attention with the road leading to it in an urgent need of repair.
Several times in the past, VIPs had skipped visiting this site on important occasions like Independence Day, Republic Day and Prakasam Pantulu’s birth and death anniversaries. A library which has a good collection of books on the freedom struggle is also in a dilapidated condition, lament villagers.
“We have been pleading successive governments to develop the site into a tourist spot by building a park. But our efforts have not borne fruit so far,” they said.
Assurances
Taking note of the poorly maintained road in the midst of lush green fields, Energy Minister Balineni Srinivasa Reddy, who experienced a bumpy ride on Friday, said that the Government would lay a cement road to the historic site so that the youth could draw inspiration from the life of the great man, who had become the Prime Minister of Madras Presidency as well as the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh when it was formed in 1953.
The Education Department would soon construct a new building for the library at the site where Prakasam Pantulu had spent his last days in a mango orchard, Education Minister A. Suresh promised.
Vinodarayunipalem, where Prakasam Pantulu was born, too lacked a befitting memorial, as also the island villa in Ongole from where he had led the freedom struggle and ran his ‘Swarajya’ newspaper. Today, a private college occupies most of the space. Even now, a memorial could be built on the vacant land available on the premises, felt Andhra Kesari Prakasam Seva Samiti leader P. Venkateswarlu.
Prakasam Pantulu’s grandson T. Gopalakrishna said the YSRCP government could draw lessons from the way Prakasam Pantalu administered the State and grapple with bifurcation blues.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Andhra Pradesh / by Special Correspondent / Ongole – August 24th, 2019