http://expressbuzz.com/states/andhrapradesh/small-farmer-makes-it-big-in-micro-irrigation/360690.html
KARIMNAGAR: A small farmer of Eedula Gattipalli in Manakondur mandal is setting an ideal to others by cultivating irrigated dry (ID) crops through micro-irrigation.
The farmer, Madishetti Ravi, cultivated cabbage in his 47 guntas (5,640 yards) of land and he obtained an yield of 16 tonnes despite the drought conditions and power problems.
Speaking to this paper, Ravi said that he used go get only 11 tonnes of cabbage before switching to drip irrigation.
“But after I began using modern irrigation method as advised by the agriculture officials, my expenditure on power and fertilisers has come down,” he said.
“I invested `25,000 in cultivating the crop and after meeting all expenses, there is a profit of `62,000,” he revealed.
Knowing about the profits, other farmers in the village are thronging Ravi’s fields to know about the benefits of micro-irrigation.
In the wake of the drought conditions, officials had decided to bring 4,000 hectares of land under drip irrigation in the district and 70 per cent of the target has been achieved so far,” said microirrigation project director Sangeeta Laxmi.
“Farmers are cultivating groundnuts, leafy vegetables, cotton, chilli, mango, banana and papaya through drip systems and cutting down expenditure on power and fertilisers.” “To encourage farmers adopt the modern farming techniques, the government is giving 100 per cent subsidy on drip, sprinkler irrigation equipment to SCs and STs, 90 per cent subsidy to small and medium farmers,” Sangeeta Laxmi added and urged farmers interested in adopting the modern irrigation methods to consult the micro-irrigation project office in the district headquarters
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Meeting Project Objectives Differently
Meeting Project objectives differently
Blind people work together and make parts of Boilers at Trichy for IOCL’s Paradip Refinery project …..… An experience sharing.
21st December 2011 has etched an unforgettable memory in my mind. I was at Tiruchirapalli on a mission to expedite supplies of Boilers at BHEL’s works for Power plant of IOCL’s ongoing Paradip Refinery Project. BHEL has outsourced non-pressure parts of these boilers to certain vendors nearby Trichy. ‘ORBIT’ is among such outsourced vendors, who is making Pins & Clamps of these boilers for our project. We decided to visit ORBIT also for review and expediting balance supplies.
When we reached ORBIT works, we were greeted by their President Mr. P.R. Pandi, who himself is a blind person. To my utter surprise, the whole ORBIT workshop is run by blind persons. Though I was aware of certain special schools and institutions for blind persons but never heard about any manufacturing industry run completely by such persons. What I saw next inside the workshop is quite difficult to believe.
I had never witnessed such well coordinated and coherent working by blind persons. People were segregating the raw material, feeding the raw material on cutting, shearing and punching machines with the help of their fellow blind friends, collecting the final products and bagging them after quality checks. The whole manufacturing process was efficiently done and finished product was meeting the quality standards. I was lost in deep admiration seeing their untiring efforts for making vital parts for my project and emotionally touched. Their interpersonal understanding and collective effort was exemplary and far better as compared to normal workers engaged in other industrial units. Below photos depict it completely but silently…
People were working with no ego and communication was being made not with vital sensory organs like eyes, but with their hearts. I was thrilled and compelled to think that dedicated and sincere working by these special people is a great example towards values of humanity which defies all laws of Project management. Calm and peace prevail here in their coordinated rhythm of working against any feeling of industrial acrimony.
What came next was even more surprising. A physically handicapped welder was doing welding on the job and was assisted by a blind helper. We saw his blind helper almost running and going to store room next door to fetch the electrodes quickly. When enquired how he could do such job with much ease, my fellow companion from BHEL, Mr. Jai Ram told me that every worker working here is fully conversant with the layout of workshop and does the job with calculated steps – concepts of time and motion study, well grasped by them by heart. I was overwhelmed by their indomitable spirit, everlasting zeal and working in perfect harmony.
At the end, ORBIT president Mr. Pandi requested me ‘Sir, if you come across any blind person, please direct him to me, we will make him our team member here’. I controlled my emotions, advised them to maintain timelines and quickly moved out with mixed feelings, thinking and admiring effort and passion of ORBIT in this endeavour and with firm conviction that Paradip Refinery Project will soon be a realised dream.
Arvind Kumar
Chief Project Manager-PDRP
Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.
Refineries Head Quarters, New Delhi
Mobile: 9582262166
Email: kumarar@iocl.co.in
PS:I would like to thank IOCL Management & BHEL team for giving me an opportunity to have such wonderful experience with a noble cause during project expediting at BHEL,Trichy.
Blind people work together and make parts of Boilers at Trichy for IOCL’s Paradip Refinery project …..… An experience sharing.
21st December 2011 has etched an unforgettable memory in my mind. I was at Tiruchirapalli on a mission to expedite supplies of Boilers at BHEL’s works for Power plant of IOCL’s ongoing Paradip Refinery Project. BHEL has outsourced non-pressure parts of these boilers to certain vendors nearby Trichy. ‘ORBIT’ is among such outsourced vendors, who is making Pins & Clamps of these boilers for our project. We decided to visit ORBIT also for review and expediting balance supplies.
When we reached ORBIT works, we were greeted by their President Mr. P.R. Pandi, who himself is a blind person. To my utter surprise, the whole ORBIT workshop is run by blind persons. Though I was aware of certain special schools and institutions for blind persons but never heard about any manufacturing industry run completely by such persons. What I saw next inside the workshop is quite difficult to believe.
I had never witnessed such well coordinated and coherent working by blind persons. People were segregating the raw material, feeding the raw material on cutting, shearing and punching machines with the help of their fellow blind friends, collecting the final products and bagging them after quality checks. The whole manufacturing process was efficiently done and finished product was meeting the quality standards. I was lost in deep admiration seeing their untiring efforts for making vital parts for my project and emotionally touched. Their interpersonal understanding and collective effort was exemplary and far better as compared to normal workers engaged in other industrial units. Below photos depict it completely but silently…
People were working with no ego and communication was being made not with vital sensory organs like eyes, but with their hearts. I was thrilled and compelled to think that dedicated and sincere working by these special people is a great example towards values of humanity which defies all laws of Project management. Calm and peace prevail here in their coordinated rhythm of working against any feeling of industrial acrimony.
What came next was even more surprising. A physically handicapped welder was doing welding on the job and was assisted by a blind helper. We saw his blind helper almost running and going to store room next door to fetch the electrodes quickly. When enquired how he could do such job with much ease, my fellow companion from BHEL, Mr. Jai Ram told me that every worker working here is fully conversant with the layout of workshop and does the job with calculated steps – concepts of time and motion study, well grasped by them by heart. I was overwhelmed by their indomitable spirit, everlasting zeal and working in perfect harmony.
At the end, ORBIT president Mr. Pandi requested me ‘Sir, if you come across any blind person, please direct him to me, we will make him our team member here’. I controlled my emotions, advised them to maintain timelines and quickly moved out with mixed feelings, thinking and admiring effort and passion of ORBIT in this endeavour and with firm conviction that Paradip Refinery Project will soon be a realised dream.
Arvind Kumar
Chief Project Manager-PDRP
Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.
Refineries Head Quarters, New Delhi
Mobile: 9582262166
Email: kumarar@iocl.co.in
PS:I would like to thank IOCL Management & BHEL team for giving me an opportunity to have such wonderful experience with a noble cause during project expediting at BHEL,Trichy.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Report on Personality Development Programme for Abhyasikas
SEVABHARATHI, SECUNDERABAD
Report on Personality Development Programme conducted on December 5, 2010
Sevabharathi-Secunderabad Vibhag conducted a two and half hour interactive session on personality development for class X students (both boys & girls) studying in Abhyasikas (study centers for boys) and Kishori Vikas Kendras (study centers for girls) in and around Secunderabad, at Hindu Public school, Sanatnagar on December 5, 2010. At present 16 Abhyasikas and 17 Kishori Vikas Kendras are running in Secunderabad Vibhag.
A total strength of 150 participated in this programme. This programme was taken by
Sri Jaladurgam Ramu, Psychologist, consultant in CARE Hospital and an expert trainer for the corportae IT profesionals, in association with Sri Ramkumar Raju of Manavatha Navodaya Foundation.
The main intention of the programme is to enrich the inclination of students towards education and to build their personality. This emphasises on how to overcome the general weaknesses and misconception of pupils towards learning the subjects. In a nutshell, session covers all the mistakes committed while studying and also enhances the ones self confidence levels to set the targets and to reach them efficiently and with elegance. As this being an interactive session, entire session was lively and every student could recognise their inherent strengths. This programme certainly enriches their studying pursuits for the future.
Report on Personality Development Programme conducted on December 5, 2010
Sevabharathi-Secunderabad Vibhag conducted a two and half hour interactive session on personality development for class X students (both boys & girls) studying in Abhyasikas (study centers for boys) and Kishori Vikas Kendras (study centers for girls) in and around Secunderabad, at Hindu Public school, Sanatnagar on December 5, 2010. At present 16 Abhyasikas and 17 Kishori Vikas Kendras are running in Secunderabad Vibhag.
A total strength of 150 participated in this programme. This programme was taken by
Sri Jaladurgam Ramu, Psychologist, consultant in CARE Hospital and an expert trainer for the corportae IT profesionals, in association with Sri Ramkumar Raju of Manavatha Navodaya Foundation.
The main intention of the programme is to enrich the inclination of students towards education and to build their personality. This emphasises on how to overcome the general weaknesses and misconception of pupils towards learning the subjects. In a nutshell, session covers all the mistakes committed while studying and also enhances the ones self confidence levels to set the targets and to reach them efficiently and with elegance. As this being an interactive session, entire session was lively and every student could recognise their inherent strengths. This programme certainly enriches their studying pursuits for the future.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Anti Cancer Drug developed by Cow Urine gets Patent
RSS-developed cancer drug gets US patent
PTI, Jun 17, 2010, 02.49pm IST,
NAGPUR: An anti-cancer drug extracted from cow urine and developed by an affiliate of the RSS has got a US patent for the third time for its anti-genotoxicity properties, a senior official has said.
The drug developed by RSS-backed Go Vigyan Anusandhan Kendra had earlier got the US patent as a bio-enhancer with antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs.
The research for the drug brand named ‘Kamdhenu Ark’ was carried out jointly by the Anusandhan Kendra and National Environmental Engineer Research Institute (NEERI), Acting Director of NEERI Tapan Chakraborty said.
The research found that Re-distilled Cow Urine Distillate (RCUD) was useful for protecting and repairing DNA from oxidative damage, Chakraborty and Sunil Mansinghka of Kendra told reporters yesterday.
Oxidative DNA damage is a leading cause of ageing, cancer and other diseases.
RCUD works against genotoxicity, a harmful action on a cell’s genetic material, they said, adding research has strengthened the efficacy of ‘Kamdhenu Ark’ as an anti-cancer drug.
The research was carried out on three patients, two of them having throat and uterus cancer, Mansinghka said.
http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/articleshow/ 6058657.cms? prtpage=1
PTI, Jun 17, 2010, 02.49pm IST,
NAGPUR: An anti-cancer drug extracted from cow urine and developed by an affiliate of the RSS has got a US patent for the third time for its anti-genotoxicity properties, a senior official has said.
The drug developed by RSS-backed Go Vigyan Anusandhan Kendra had earlier got the US patent as a bio-enhancer with antibiotics and anti-cancer drugs.
The research for the drug brand named ‘Kamdhenu Ark’ was carried out jointly by the Anusandhan Kendra and National Environmental Engineer Research Institute (NEERI), Acting Director of NEERI Tapan Chakraborty said.
The research found that Re-distilled Cow Urine Distillate (RCUD) was useful for protecting and repairing DNA from oxidative damage, Chakraborty and Sunil Mansinghka of Kendra told reporters yesterday.
Oxidative DNA damage is a leading cause of ageing, cancer and other diseases.
RCUD works against genotoxicity, a harmful action on a cell’s genetic material, they said, adding research has strengthened the efficacy of ‘Kamdhenu Ark’ as an anti-cancer drug.
The research was carried out on three patients, two of them having throat and uterus cancer, Mansinghka said.
http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/articleshow/ 6058657.cms? prtpage=1
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
A Study Tour on Hindu Seva Pratishtana - By Vasu
Sri Vasu, A Pracharak of the RSS from Indur (Nizamabad dist) completed a study tour of Hindu Seva Pratisthana and has written an excellent report in Telugu on the various initiatives & inspiration he derived from the work of HSP.
The article is posted at http://lokahitam.com/getarticlefromdb.php?Article_Id=685
AND the scribd link below
Vasuji's - Hindu Seva Pratisthan Tour
The article is posted at http://lokahitam.com/getarticlefromdb.php?Article_Id=685
AND the scribd link below
Vasuji's - Hindu Seva Pratisthan Tour
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Nanaji Deshmukh - An Inspiration
http://www.expressb uzz.com/edition/ story.aspx? 1 March 2010
Nanaji’ as Nana Deshmukh was known in political and social circles, which he dominated for almost six decades, is no more. Many who were inspired by him in politics and outside saw and knew him as a towering idealist; his admirers and friends experienced and rated him as a great political strategist. Joining the RSS at a young age and becoming its pracharak (whole-time volunteer), he was undoubtedly a great organiser. He had intimate friends in high places everywhere. He was equally at ease with both the noble Bhoodhan movement of Vinobha Bhave and the gutter politics of Delhi. He had friends even in the garrisons of his adversaries. When Jawaharlal Nehru had banned the RSS in 1948, Nanaji Deshmukh began organising the underground movement. From where? Believe it, from the house of Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, a minister in Pandit Nehru’s government. It was public knowledge that Nehru had regarded RSS as his archenemy and had even declared that he would not give an inch in India for the Bhagwa (the flag of the RSS) to fly. Still Kidwai, a great friend of Nehru, had no issues about keeping Nanaji in house and more — allowing him to organise underground activities. This indicates the magnetic personality of Nanaji who must have been then in his twenties!
My association with Nanaji Deshmukh started with my friendship with Ramnath Goenka. Ramnathji and Nanaji were not only great friends, they both thought and felt about the country almost alike. The mutual trust and admiration that they had was rooted wholly in their love of the motherland, totally devoid of any kind of personal interest. The Nanaji-Ramnathji combine felt that no goal other than what they thought was the good of the nation. Ramnath Goenka had shaped the Indian Express not as just a newspaper. It was an active partner with all nationalist forces in the cause of the country, setting the agenda for political and social discourse. Ramnathji never knew what fear meant in life. So was Nanaji. And these two courageous persons could effortlessly infect many others of high relevance, journalists or others, with fearlessness. It was the Ramnathji-Nanaji duo that persuaded Jayaprakash Narayan to agree to lead the Bihar movement in 1974, which changed the political picture of the country.
An incredible incident made Jayaprakash Narayan to agree to the plea of Nanaji and Ramnathji to lead the movement against Indira Gandhi. I came to know of this in the late 1980s when at a dinner in the Express Towers in Bombay I asked Nanaji and Ramnathji how they brought JP into the movement. Nanaji described the thrilling and unbelievable episode. A historic meeting of Ramnathji, Nanaji, Achyut Patwardhan, the hero of the 1942 underground movement and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, a great Hindi poet, took place sometime in 1973 in the Indian Express Guest House in Bangalore. Ramnathji, Nanaji, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Achyut Patwardhan, began insisting that JP should lead the movement as Indira Gandhi had become highly autocratic and had begun destroying the institutional framework of democracy including the judiciary and bureaucracy. Incidentally, Dinkar was one of the greatest friends of the Nehru family and particularly of Indira Gandhi herself. But that did not detract him from doing what he thought was his duty to the nation. JP was hesitant mainly because of his health. He was a diabetic and had acute prostrate gland issues. He said that he would not be able to live for long and his health did not permit him to undertake such an arduous task. Ramnathji assured him that he would have his prostrate operation done in Vellore, which he eventually got done later. But JP could still not make up his mind. At that point, Ramnathji suggested that all of them should go to Tirupati, have darshan and prayers and from there, go to Madras as it was known then, and continue the discussions. And they all left for Tirupati.
During the darshan at Tirupati, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar openly prayed to Lord Balaji, to the hearing of JP and the others, that whatever remaining years of life Dinkar had the Lord should give them to JP to help him serve the cause of the motherland. And they all returned to Madras and to Ramnathji’s house in the Express Estates in Mount Road. Within hours Ramdhari Singh Dinkar fell on the lap of Ramnath Goenka and died — yes he died when JP, Nanaji and Achyut Patwardhan were around. It was clear that Lord Balaji had answered Dinkar’s prayers. JP’s decision to lead the movement came in no time. Despite my several requests Nanaji had refused to write about it in the Indian Express. When I asked him how will the people of India know about it, he said that he had written in his diary and he would like it to be known after his death. Now that he is no more I felt free to write about it.
After the operation JP began to lead one of the biggest mass movements against corruption in free India and that led to the imposition of Emergency, arrest of all national opposition leaders and a ban on the RSS. That was the best period in the life of Nanaji. He was one of the initiators of the underground movement that finally exploded as the Janata wave when in 1977 Indira Gandhi, with a view to securing mandate for her autocracy declared elections to Parliament, not knowing that, without her intelligence agencies having a whiff of it, the underground movement had generated a political tornado against her. Nanaji was the architect of the Janata Party. He contested elections for the first time and won. He refused to join the ministry when Morarji Desai insisted.
Later when the Janata Party split and the Bharatiya Janata Party was formed in 1980, Nanaji announced that he would like to retire from active politics as he was attaining the age of 65. A new role — that of a social worker — to lift moral and spiritual values and to promote economic and social well-being of the distanced people awaited him. He started his work first in the most backward districts of Gonda in UP and next in the equally drought-prone and poverty-ridden Bead district in Maharashtra and finally settled to do a more comprehensive work of socio-economic progress with moral values covering some 500 villages in Chitrakoot district. The President of India Abdul Kalam visited Nanaji’s Chitrakoot project, praised and blessed it as the most suitable one for India noting that almost 80 villages in the district had become litigation free. That was his final karma bhoomi even though the whole country was his karma bhoomi. He once told me that when he was a child many days he had had nothing to eat. But that did not turn him into a naxalite. But his introduction to the RSS at the right age, and association with the right persons, had turned him into a great nationalist who lived for his motherland’s glory and nothing else.
comment@gurumurthy. net
Nanaji’ as Nana Deshmukh was known in political and social circles, which he dominated for almost six decades, is no more. Many who were inspired by him in politics and outside saw and knew him as a towering idealist; his admirers and friends experienced and rated him as a great political strategist. Joining the RSS at a young age and becoming its pracharak (whole-time volunteer), he was undoubtedly a great organiser. He had intimate friends in high places everywhere. He was equally at ease with both the noble Bhoodhan movement of Vinobha Bhave and the gutter politics of Delhi. He had friends even in the garrisons of his adversaries. When Jawaharlal Nehru had banned the RSS in 1948, Nanaji Deshmukh began organising the underground movement. From where? Believe it, from the house of Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, a minister in Pandit Nehru’s government. It was public knowledge that Nehru had regarded RSS as his archenemy and had even declared that he would not give an inch in India for the Bhagwa (the flag of the RSS) to fly. Still Kidwai, a great friend of Nehru, had no issues about keeping Nanaji in house and more — allowing him to organise underground activities. This indicates the magnetic personality of Nanaji who must have been then in his twenties!
My association with Nanaji Deshmukh started with my friendship with Ramnath Goenka. Ramnathji and Nanaji were not only great friends, they both thought and felt about the country almost alike. The mutual trust and admiration that they had was rooted wholly in their love of the motherland, totally devoid of any kind of personal interest. The Nanaji-Ramnathji combine felt that no goal other than what they thought was the good of the nation. Ramnath Goenka had shaped the Indian Express not as just a newspaper. It was an active partner with all nationalist forces in the cause of the country, setting the agenda for political and social discourse. Ramnathji never knew what fear meant in life. So was Nanaji. And these two courageous persons could effortlessly infect many others of high relevance, journalists or others, with fearlessness. It was the Ramnathji-Nanaji duo that persuaded Jayaprakash Narayan to agree to lead the Bihar movement in 1974, which changed the political picture of the country.
An incredible incident made Jayaprakash Narayan to agree to the plea of Nanaji and Ramnathji to lead the movement against Indira Gandhi. I came to know of this in the late 1980s when at a dinner in the Express Towers in Bombay I asked Nanaji and Ramnathji how they brought JP into the movement. Nanaji described the thrilling and unbelievable episode. A historic meeting of Ramnathji, Nanaji, Achyut Patwardhan, the hero of the 1942 underground movement and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, a great Hindi poet, took place sometime in 1973 in the Indian Express Guest House in Bangalore. Ramnathji, Nanaji, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Achyut Patwardhan, began insisting that JP should lead the movement as Indira Gandhi had become highly autocratic and had begun destroying the institutional framework of democracy including the judiciary and bureaucracy. Incidentally, Dinkar was one of the greatest friends of the Nehru family and particularly of Indira Gandhi herself. But that did not detract him from doing what he thought was his duty to the nation. JP was hesitant mainly because of his health. He was a diabetic and had acute prostrate gland issues. He said that he would not be able to live for long and his health did not permit him to undertake such an arduous task. Ramnathji assured him that he would have his prostrate operation done in Vellore, which he eventually got done later. But JP could still not make up his mind. At that point, Ramnathji suggested that all of them should go to Tirupati, have darshan and prayers and from there, go to Madras as it was known then, and continue the discussions. And they all left for Tirupati.
During the darshan at Tirupati, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar openly prayed to Lord Balaji, to the hearing of JP and the others, that whatever remaining years of life Dinkar had the Lord should give them to JP to help him serve the cause of the motherland. And they all returned to Madras and to Ramnathji’s house in the Express Estates in Mount Road. Within hours Ramdhari Singh Dinkar fell on the lap of Ramnath Goenka and died — yes he died when JP, Nanaji and Achyut Patwardhan were around. It was clear that Lord Balaji had answered Dinkar’s prayers. JP’s decision to lead the movement came in no time. Despite my several requests Nanaji had refused to write about it in the Indian Express. When I asked him how will the people of India know about it, he said that he had written in his diary and he would like it to be known after his death. Now that he is no more I felt free to write about it.
After the operation JP began to lead one of the biggest mass movements against corruption in free India and that led to the imposition of Emergency, arrest of all national opposition leaders and a ban on the RSS. That was the best period in the life of Nanaji. He was one of the initiators of the underground movement that finally exploded as the Janata wave when in 1977 Indira Gandhi, with a view to securing mandate for her autocracy declared elections to Parliament, not knowing that, without her intelligence agencies having a whiff of it, the underground movement had generated a political tornado against her. Nanaji was the architect of the Janata Party. He contested elections for the first time and won. He refused to join the ministry when Morarji Desai insisted.
Later when the Janata Party split and the Bharatiya Janata Party was formed in 1980, Nanaji announced that he would like to retire from active politics as he was attaining the age of 65. A new role — that of a social worker — to lift moral and spiritual values and to promote economic and social well-being of the distanced people awaited him. He started his work first in the most backward districts of Gonda in UP and next in the equally drought-prone and poverty-ridden Bead district in Maharashtra and finally settled to do a more comprehensive work of socio-economic progress with moral values covering some 500 villages in Chitrakoot district. The President of India Abdul Kalam visited Nanaji’s Chitrakoot project, praised and blessed it as the most suitable one for India noting that almost 80 villages in the district had become litigation free. That was his final karma bhoomi even though the whole country was his karma bhoomi. He once told me that when he was a child many days he had had nothing to eat. But that did not turn him into a naxalite. But his introduction to the RSS at the right age, and association with the right persons, had turned him into a great nationalist who lived for his motherland’s glory and nothing else.
comment@gurumurthy. net
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
India's 'green and clean' village
India's 'green and clean' village
Author: Jyotsna Singh
Publication: BBC News
Date: September 25, 2009
URL: http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/south_ asia/8259789. stm
A small village in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya has
become the envy of its neighbours.
Large crowds of visitors have been thronging to the village curious to
find out why Mawlynnong has earned the reputation for being arguably the
cleanest and best educated in India - all its residents can read and
write and each house has a toilet.
That is no mean achievement in a country that is still struggling to
educate its population and address basic water and sanitation issues.
About 90km (55 miles) from the state capital Shillong and barely 4km
(2.4 miles) from the Bangladeshi border, Mawlynnong is much loved by its
inhabitants who work hard to keep it clean.
Bamboo dustbins
It is five in the morning and pouring with rain. But that does not deter
a group of volunteers in the village from rising early to sweep the
roads. It is a process that is repeated several times a day.
"Some cleaners have been hired by the village council to sweep the
roads - but many villagers take turns to make sure they are swept
several times a day because it is not possible to pay so many people,"
says young volunteer Henry Khyrrum.
The streets are all dotted with dustbins made of bamboo. Every piece of
litter and almost every leaf that has fallen from a tree is immediately
discarded.
Plastic is completely banned and all waste disposal is environmentally
friendly. Rubbish is thrown into a pit dug in a forest near the village
where it is left to turn into compost.
The villagers here say that lessons in hygiene start in school so that
children can be taught from an early age how to keep their surroundings
clean and green.
Mawlynnong is one of the wettest parts of the country - and while many
parts of India are suffering under drought-like conditions this year,
the south-western monsoon has not disappointed the north-east.
While the supply of clean water and sanitation is a huge problem in
India's teeming cities, it is an even bigger challenge for the
authorities in the country's villages where these facilities are almost
non-existent.
Keeping it clean now comes naturally to most people here. The village
headman says the village council - or Darbar - maintains very strict
discipline.
'Global warming'
"There is a fine imposed by the village council for anybody found to be
throwing litter around or cutting trees. You see, the fine is just one
dollar for each such offence committed. But due to the humiliation and
embarrassment that our self-respecting people feel at being fined, they
make sure to follow the rules," says village headman Thomlin
Khongthohrem.
"Besides, the council carries out strict inspections of the sanitation
facilities in each house.
"Workshops are also being organised to make people aware of the dangers
from global warming."
Experts say Mawlynnong, like the rest of the state, has a very effective
local governance system. The society is matrilineal - meaning that land
is passed down through the female side of families - making women
economically more powerful.
Mawlynnong's reputation for being clean and green has been well
documented, and its Khasi tribal inhabitants are known to be worshippers
of nature.
Their reverence for nature is seen by some as an effective way of
preserving the forest cover.
Thambor Lyngdoh, in charge of a sacred community forest in a
neighbouring village, says the while it is true that many Khasi people
are "nature worshippers" the drive for cleanliness and education is not
about faith only.
"Even today we are very strict about how the forest can be used," he
says.
"People are allowed to take whatever they need from the forest for their
own use. But they cannot take anything more than that for any kind of
commercial use. They are punished for any violation."
Local initiative
Mawlynnong's reputation for cleanliness has even earned it a place on
the state's tourism map.
Hundreds of visitors from all over India now visit the village
throughout the year. Most of those visitors are impressed with what they
see.
"This is the first time I have come to this place. I really want to
congratulate the villagers who have made the place so beautiful and the
cleanest in the continent. There is something special about the place.
We just came to see why it has become so famous. It really is clean and
you have to give them 10 out of 10 for that," says Sanjay Saraogi, a
tourist from Shillong.
Another tourist, Euginea, says the rest of country should learn from
Mawlynnong's experience.
"I have come to this village to see its cleanliness and I think
everybody should follow the example of the villagers," she says
Mawlynnong's success is entirely driven by local initiative. It has been
so successful that the state government has been prompted to promote
eco-tourism in the area but the locals are resisting this.
"There is a fierce sense of self-determination among these people. There
are certain rules they have followed traditionally. They do not want
government to borrow ideas from outside and impose it on them," says
Deepak Laloo, a member of the Meghalaya Tourism Development forum."
The villagers are treading a path that the rest of India should be keen
to follow.
Author: Jyotsna Singh
Publication: BBC News
Date: September 25, 2009
URL: http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/south_ asia/8259789. stm
A small village in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya has
become the envy of its neighbours.
Large crowds of visitors have been thronging to the village curious to
find out why Mawlynnong has earned the reputation for being arguably the
cleanest and best educated in India - all its residents can read and
write and each house has a toilet.
That is no mean achievement in a country that is still struggling to
educate its population and address basic water and sanitation issues.
About 90km (55 miles) from the state capital Shillong and barely 4km
(2.4 miles) from the Bangladeshi border, Mawlynnong is much loved by its
inhabitants who work hard to keep it clean.
Bamboo dustbins
It is five in the morning and pouring with rain. But that does not deter
a group of volunteers in the village from rising early to sweep the
roads. It is a process that is repeated several times a day.
"Some cleaners have been hired by the village council to sweep the
roads - but many villagers take turns to make sure they are swept
several times a day because it is not possible to pay so many people,"
says young volunteer Henry Khyrrum.
The streets are all dotted with dustbins made of bamboo. Every piece of
litter and almost every leaf that has fallen from a tree is immediately
discarded.
Plastic is completely banned and all waste disposal is environmentally
friendly. Rubbish is thrown into a pit dug in a forest near the village
where it is left to turn into compost.
The villagers here say that lessons in hygiene start in school so that
children can be taught from an early age how to keep their surroundings
clean and green.
Mawlynnong is one of the wettest parts of the country - and while many
parts of India are suffering under drought-like conditions this year,
the south-western monsoon has not disappointed the north-east.
While the supply of clean water and sanitation is a huge problem in
India's teeming cities, it is an even bigger challenge for the
authorities in the country's villages where these facilities are almost
non-existent.
Keeping it clean now comes naturally to most people here. The village
headman says the village council - or Darbar - maintains very strict
discipline.
'Global warming'
"There is a fine imposed by the village council for anybody found to be
throwing litter around or cutting trees. You see, the fine is just one
dollar for each such offence committed. But due to the humiliation and
embarrassment that our self-respecting people feel at being fined, they
make sure to follow the rules," says village headman Thomlin
Khongthohrem.
"Besides, the council carries out strict inspections of the sanitation
facilities in each house.
"Workshops are also being organised to make people aware of the dangers
from global warming."
Experts say Mawlynnong, like the rest of the state, has a very effective
local governance system. The society is matrilineal - meaning that land
is passed down through the female side of families - making women
economically more powerful.
Mawlynnong's reputation for being clean and green has been well
documented, and its Khasi tribal inhabitants are known to be worshippers
of nature.
Their reverence for nature is seen by some as an effective way of
preserving the forest cover.
Thambor Lyngdoh, in charge of a sacred community forest in a
neighbouring village, says the while it is true that many Khasi people
are "nature worshippers" the drive for cleanliness and education is not
about faith only.
"Even today we are very strict about how the forest can be used," he
says.
"People are allowed to take whatever they need from the forest for their
own use. But they cannot take anything more than that for any kind of
commercial use. They are punished for any violation."
Local initiative
Mawlynnong's reputation for cleanliness has even earned it a place on
the state's tourism map.
Hundreds of visitors from all over India now visit the village
throughout the year. Most of those visitors are impressed with what they
see.
"This is the first time I have come to this place. I really want to
congratulate the villagers who have made the place so beautiful and the
cleanest in the continent. There is something special about the place.
We just came to see why it has become so famous. It really is clean and
you have to give them 10 out of 10 for that," says Sanjay Saraogi, a
tourist from Shillong.
Another tourist, Euginea, says the rest of country should learn from
Mawlynnong's experience.
"I have come to this village to see its cleanliness and I think
everybody should follow the example of the villagers," she says
Mawlynnong's success is entirely driven by local initiative. It has been
so successful that the state government has been prompted to promote
eco-tourism in the area but the locals are resisting this.
"There is a fierce sense of self-determination among these people. There
are certain rules they have followed traditionally. They do not want
government to borrow ideas from outside and impose it on them," says
Deepak Laloo, a member of the Meghalaya Tourism Development forum."
The villagers are treading a path that the rest of India should be keen
to follow.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Flood Relief Activity in Kurnool, Mahabubnagar by Seva Bharati
Media News
At least 130 people have been killed in Andhra Pradesh and neighboring Karnataka due to floods resulting from heavy rains since Wednesday (1st Oct). Andhra Pradesh is facing the worst ever floods in its 60 years, as 60 per cent of Kurnool district was submerged on Friday leaving thousands homeless and stranded without food and water. Nearly two lakh people have been evacuated to relief camps in the worst-affected districts of Kurnool, Mahabubnagar and Krishna district.
The gates of several projects on the Krishna river — including Jurala, Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar and Prakasham — have been opened to release the flood water. While the inflow into Srisailam reservoir has touched an all-time high of 21 lakh cusecs, 10 lakh cusecs of water has been discharged from Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar reservoirs.
“This is a never-before-seen situation. Never in the past has the Krishna basin witnessed such floods and inflow of water into the dams. I am urging the people in the low-lying areas not to take the threat lightly. Move out to the safer places and cooperate with the officials,” said the State Revenue Minister Dharmana Prasad Rao in Hyderabad.
Army boats and Air Force helicopters Friday began to rescue hundreds of people marooned at several places. Thousands have been rendered homeless. Over 40,000 houses have been damaged. Chief Minister K. Rosaiah said the flood situation was grim and army personnel have been deployed for rescue operations. Six helicopters have been pressed into service to rescue people. While four helicopters are being used to airlift the flood-hit in Kurnool district, two choppers were deployed in Mahabubnagar district.
Preliminary first hand report from Seva Bharati Team
Seva Bharati volunteers have already started launching relief camps in affected towns of AP & Karnataka and now food is being provided to the people. As per the preliminary report received from volunteers for below 2 districts the situation is as below:
Kurnool District:
Affected Data
- Total 8 Revenue Mandals- About 6 lakh people- About 1,00,00 acre crop- Kurnool town 50% affected (2.5lakh people)- Mantralaya – famous temple of Raghavendra Swamy completely immersed in water. ( now cleared).
Relief Centre in Kurnool town being organised at G.Pulla Reddy Engineering College.
About 60,000 Food packets are being carried from Nandyala and neighbouring mandals to the relief centre.
Palamoor District (Mahabubnagar District):Affected Data
-Total 2 Revenue Mandals- About 2 lakh people- About 5,000 acre crop- 130 small lakes got cut due to floods causing at least 130-150 villages completely sub-merging in water.
15 relief centres.
How to contribute
A time for action is here again. Let us donate generously for the relief and rehabilitation of the affected people many of whom have lost everything overnight.
Online transfer of funds can be done to Seva Bharathi A/c No: 630501065297, ICICI Bank, Himayat Nagar Branch, Hyderabad. You can also draw a cheque/draft in the name of Seva Bharathi and post/courier it to below address
SEVA BHARATHI
H No:3-4-228,Opp Jain Mandir
Lingampally, Kachiguda, Hyderabad 50007
Mob: + 91 9701226830, +91 9849262868
[Please note that all contributions to Seva Bharathi are tax-exempt under 80G.]
If you are interested in joining the Seva Bharathi team at ground zero, please send email to http://arisebharat.wordpress.com/mc/compose?to=sewabharathi@gmail.com or arisebharat@gmail.com
Him I call a Mahatma whose heart bleeds for the poor – Swami Vivekananda
At least 130 people have been killed in Andhra Pradesh and neighboring Karnataka due to floods resulting from heavy rains since Wednesday (1st Oct). Andhra Pradesh is facing the worst ever floods in its 60 years, as 60 per cent of Kurnool district was submerged on Friday leaving thousands homeless and stranded without food and water. Nearly two lakh people have been evacuated to relief camps in the worst-affected districts of Kurnool, Mahabubnagar and Krishna district.
The gates of several projects on the Krishna river — including Jurala, Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar and Prakasham — have been opened to release the flood water. While the inflow into Srisailam reservoir has touched an all-time high of 21 lakh cusecs, 10 lakh cusecs of water has been discharged from Srisailam and Nagarjuna Sagar reservoirs.
“This is a never-before-seen situation. Never in the past has the Krishna basin witnessed such floods and inflow of water into the dams. I am urging the people in the low-lying areas not to take the threat lightly. Move out to the safer places and cooperate with the officials,” said the State Revenue Minister Dharmana Prasad Rao in Hyderabad.
Army boats and Air Force helicopters Friday began to rescue hundreds of people marooned at several places. Thousands have been rendered homeless. Over 40,000 houses have been damaged. Chief Minister K. Rosaiah said the flood situation was grim and army personnel have been deployed for rescue operations. Six helicopters have been pressed into service to rescue people. While four helicopters are being used to airlift the flood-hit in Kurnool district, two choppers were deployed in Mahabubnagar district.
Preliminary first hand report from Seva Bharati Team
Seva Bharati volunteers have already started launching relief camps in affected towns of AP & Karnataka and now food is being provided to the people. As per the preliminary report received from volunteers for below 2 districts the situation is as below:
Kurnool District:
Affected Data
- Total 8 Revenue Mandals- About 6 lakh people- About 1,00,00 acre crop- Kurnool town 50% affected (2.5lakh people)- Mantralaya – famous temple of Raghavendra Swamy completely immersed in water. ( now cleared).
Relief Centre in Kurnool town being organised at G.Pulla Reddy Engineering College.
About 60,000 Food packets are being carried from Nandyala and neighbouring mandals to the relief centre.
Palamoor District (Mahabubnagar District):Affected Data
-Total 2 Revenue Mandals- About 2 lakh people- About 5,000 acre crop- 130 small lakes got cut due to floods causing at least 130-150 villages completely sub-merging in water.
15 relief centres.
How to contribute
A time for action is here again. Let us donate generously for the relief and rehabilitation of the affected people many of whom have lost everything overnight.
Online transfer of funds can be done to Seva Bharathi A/c No: 630501065297, ICICI Bank, Himayat Nagar Branch, Hyderabad. You can also draw a cheque/draft in the name of Seva Bharathi and post/courier it to below address
SEVA BHARATHI
H No:3-4-228,Opp Jain Mandir
Lingampally, Kachiguda, Hyderabad 50007
Mob: + 91 9701226830, +91 9849262868
[Please note that all contributions to Seva Bharathi are tax-exempt under 80G.]
If you are interested in joining the Seva Bharathi team at ground zero, please send email to http://arisebharat.wordpress.com/mc/compose?to=sewabharathi@gmail.com or arisebharat@gmail.com
Him I call a Mahatma whose heart bleeds for the poor – Swami Vivekananda
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Extraordinary Indians: Doc who charges only Rs 2
Extraordinary Indians: Doc who charges only Rs 2
Author: A Ganesh NadarPublication:
Date: December 17, 1999URL:
'If you want to serve mankind, go and work among the poorest and most neglected,' Dr Ravindra Koelhe, who has been serving the tribals of Melghat, Maharashtra, for 24 years, tells A Ganesh Nadar.Continuing our series on Extraordinary Indians.Dr Ravindra Koelhe, MD, lives and runs a clinic in Melghat, Maharashtra. His fee is Rs 2 for the first consultation and Rs 1 for the second.Not only is he a doctor and social worker, Dr Koelhe has also taken the government to court for having failed in its duty to protect the Korku tribals of the region.After completing his MBBS, he worked in Melghat for a year-and-a-half only to realise that he needed more expertise to handle the problems of the tribals. So he went back to medical college for an MD in preventive and social medicine."I have now been here for 24 years. In those days there were two public health centres and no roads. Once a week, I used to walk 40 kms from Dharni to Bairagarh to reach my clinic. I used to see at least one tiger every month. Since the last three years I haven't seen a single one," he says remembering his early days as a young doctor.After completing his MBBS from Nagpur University, he decided to work in rural India. An ardent follower of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave, he was also influenced by Ruskin Bond who wrote, 'If you want to serve mankind, go and work among the poorest and most neglected.'He toured the rural areas of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and decided that Gadricholi in Maharashtra was the most backward amongst his travels and decided to work there. His mother discouraged him since it was a Naxalite affected area. She told him that Melghat was equally backward and that he should work here instead.Dr Koelhe has been in Melghat since then. It has been 24 years now.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Youth for Seva- School kit drive
Namaste ,
Youth for Seva ( YFS) is an organisation which works towards networking of Youth, esp professionals towards service activities. Last month,a few software professionals from YFS joined hands together and embarked on a program to collect funds to distribute school kits to children of government schools. After finishing the collection drive, they went to Ramayanpet, which is about 100 kms from Hyderabad and distributed the school kits in the schools and finally spent some time in the Seva Bharati hostel for destitute children. They played with the children as well. Pl find below links to the photographs. I thought this would interest you.
Ramayampet:
http://tinyurl.com/lsn89l
Sewa Bharathi Hostel:
http://tinyurl.com/ntufnm
best regards
Ayush
Youth for Seva ( YFS) is an organisation which works towards networking of Youth, esp professionals towards service activities. Last month,a few software professionals from YFS joined hands together and embarked on a program to collect funds to distribute school kits to children of government schools. After finishing the collection drive, they went to Ramayanpet, which is about 100 kms from Hyderabad and distributed the school kits in the schools and finally spent some time in the Seva Bharati hostel for destitute children. They played with the children as well. Pl find below links to the photographs. I thought this would interest you.
Ramayampet:
http://tinyurl.com/lsn89l
Sewa Bharathi Hostel:
http://tinyurl.com/ntufnm
best regards
Ayush
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
An experiment of economic empowerment by Sewa Bharati in Jharkhand
By Maya Singh
The experiment of Self-Help Group (SHG) by Sewa Bharati proved a major success in the remote areas of Jharkhand. Presently, there are over 1400 SHGs in the state run by Sewa Bharati activists. Every group normally has 15-20 women. This number goes over 25,000. Today, these women are writing a new chapter of change after achieving self-respect and self-dependence with the help of SHGs.SHGs have brought about a sea-change and awareness among the women who are mostly illiterate. They not only developed the feeling of taking group decisions but also to get rid themselves of the clutches and atrocities of private moneylenders. They not only changed their own life but also extended a helping hand to the needy persons of the society. Women of a similar group in Ranchi helped in eye operation of a minor child at Shankar Eye Hospital in Chennai. The women in the group of Meera, Rani and Neetu make bari, papar, pickle, spices, jute bags, etc. Arati, Anuradha and Sanyukta impart training of making candles, growing mushroom, making jam and jailly and also sell the goods made by them. Malati and Keshwanti of Tupudana received the training of making bangles by lakh and goods of jute from Jaipur. Now they not only make all these things themselves but also impart training to other women. They organise stalls of the goods made by them under the banner of Sewa Bharati in various fairs and exhibitions. Some sell the products in local markets while some move up to Delhi to participate in the trade fair organised at Pragati Maidan every year.The group of women, led by Malati of Tupudana purchased a tractor with the help of a bank and earned money by running it on hire. When the Block Development Officer (BDO) of Khunti misguided Mateshwari Devi regarding the time of foundation stone laying ceremony of a road at 6.00 am in the morning, she, along with other women, went to the spot at 4.00 am and blocked the road to protest against the mischief of the BDO. Finally, Malati got the contract of making that road and she did the work with dedication and received appreciation from all. The SHG of women led by Arati of Namkom purchased an auto-rickshaw and got contracts of building roads, ponds and government buildings.The women take part in social activities too with full activism. Sarika of Khunti district foiled the game plan of a married person who was going to marry another woman despite having one wife. She earned praise from the people through this conduct. Similarly, Arati, Sanyukta and Anuradha of Namkom jointly got a wedding ceremony stopped, as the groom was addict. They also forced the groom's parents to pay the expenditure of the bride's family on the marriage. They later married that girl with a suitable boy after some time. The women of Bokaro who mostly work as midwives helped their husbands who are mostly rickshaw-pullers and work as collie, to learn at least doing signature. Now they proudly say that nobody in their group is illiterate. They are also very punctual in their activities, which is praised by all.Sumitra Devi and Manodevi of Dhanbad admit that their life has changed considerably after joining the SHGs and Samskar Kendras run by Sewa Bharati. They not only felt the change in their individual life but also got more respect by their husbands and the society. The women of Gumla purchased foodgrains in bulk and sold it after some time, which helped them in earning good profit.A woman of Gumla was not going to her in-laws' house. She had the bad habit of fighting with everybody. She levelled various allegations against her husband and every time she refused to go with him. The women of SHG persuaded her husband and sent her with him. The women of Pakud district organised a mass marriage ceremony and got married 125 pairs.Such change comes silently and leaves lasting impact. All this has been possible only due to the involvement of the Sewa Bharati workers with the projects from hearts.
The experiment of Self-Help Group (SHG) by Sewa Bharati proved a major success in the remote areas of Jharkhand. Presently, there are over 1400 SHGs in the state run by Sewa Bharati activists. Every group normally has 15-20 women. This number goes over 25,000. Today, these women are writing a new chapter of change after achieving self-respect and self-dependence with the help of SHGs.SHGs have brought about a sea-change and awareness among the women who are mostly illiterate. They not only developed the feeling of taking group decisions but also to get rid themselves of the clutches and atrocities of private moneylenders. They not only changed their own life but also extended a helping hand to the needy persons of the society. Women of a similar group in Ranchi helped in eye operation of a minor child at Shankar Eye Hospital in Chennai. The women in the group of Meera, Rani and Neetu make bari, papar, pickle, spices, jute bags, etc. Arati, Anuradha and Sanyukta impart training of making candles, growing mushroom, making jam and jailly and also sell the goods made by them. Malati and Keshwanti of Tupudana received the training of making bangles by lakh and goods of jute from Jaipur. Now they not only make all these things themselves but also impart training to other women. They organise stalls of the goods made by them under the banner of Sewa Bharati in various fairs and exhibitions. Some sell the products in local markets while some move up to Delhi to participate in the trade fair organised at Pragati Maidan every year.The group of women, led by Malati of Tupudana purchased a tractor with the help of a bank and earned money by running it on hire. When the Block Development Officer (BDO) of Khunti misguided Mateshwari Devi regarding the time of foundation stone laying ceremony of a road at 6.00 am in the morning, she, along with other women, went to the spot at 4.00 am and blocked the road to protest against the mischief of the BDO. Finally, Malati got the contract of making that road and she did the work with dedication and received appreciation from all. The SHG of women led by Arati of Namkom purchased an auto-rickshaw and got contracts of building roads, ponds and government buildings.The women take part in social activities too with full activism. Sarika of Khunti district foiled the game plan of a married person who was going to marry another woman despite having one wife. She earned praise from the people through this conduct. Similarly, Arati, Sanyukta and Anuradha of Namkom jointly got a wedding ceremony stopped, as the groom was addict. They also forced the groom's parents to pay the expenditure of the bride's family on the marriage. They later married that girl with a suitable boy after some time. The women of Bokaro who mostly work as midwives helped their husbands who are mostly rickshaw-pullers and work as collie, to learn at least doing signature. Now they proudly say that nobody in their group is illiterate. They are also very punctual in their activities, which is praised by all.Sumitra Devi and Manodevi of Dhanbad admit that their life has changed considerably after joining the SHGs and Samskar Kendras run by Sewa Bharati. They not only felt the change in their individual life but also got more respect by their husbands and the society. The women of Gumla purchased foodgrains in bulk and sold it after some time, which helped them in earning good profit.A woman of Gumla was not going to her in-laws' house. She had the bad habit of fighting with everybody. She levelled various allegations against her husband and every time she refused to go with him. The women of SHG persuaded her husband and sent her with him. The women of Pakud district organised a mass marriage ceremony and got married 125 pairs.Such change comes silently and leaves lasting impact. All this has been possible only due to the involvement of the Sewa Bharati workers with the projects from hearts.
Panini to the rescue for a computational grammarian
Panini to the rescue for a computational grammarian
Research team turns to the “world’s first computational grammarian!”.
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/images/ 2009051850090301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Panini, the legendary Sanskrit grammarian of 5th century BC, is the world’s first computational grammarian! Panini’s work, Ashtadhyayi (the Eight-Chaptered book), is considered to be the most comprehensive scientific grammar ever written for any language.
According to Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad) and an expert on language computation, Panini’s epic treatise on grammar came to the rescue of language experts in making English unambiguous. English is more difficult (as far as machine translations are concerned) with a high degree of ambiguity.
Some words have different meanings, making the analysis (to facilitate translations) a difficult process. Making it disambiguous is quite a task, where Panini’s principles might be of use.
Ashtadhyayi, the earlier work on descriptive linguistics, consists of 3,959 sutras (or principles). These highly systemised and technical principles, some say, marked the rise of classical Sanskrit.
Sampark, the multi-institute effort launched to produce a translation engine, enabling users to translate tests from English to various languages, will use some of the technical aspects enunciated by Panini. “We looked at alternatives before choosing Panini,” Prof Sangal says.
Incidentally, Prof Sangal co-authored a book, Natural Language Processing – A Panini Perspective, a few years ago.
Besides the technical side, Panini would be of great help to researchers on the translation engine on the language side too.
A good number of words in almost all the Indian languages originate from Sanskrit. “That is great because Indian languages are related to each other,” Prof Sangal points out.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/stories/ 2009051850090300 .htm
Break the language barrier
Word for word: More on the Sampark initiative to enrich translation. .
Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this?
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/bline/ ew/2009/05/ 18/images/ 2009051850070301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Telugus, Kannadigas and Malayalis can read Subrahmanya Bharati, the legendary Tamil poet, and relish the sweetness in his poetry. Similarly, Premchand, Tagore, M T Vasudeva Nair, and U R Ananthamurthy too could be read and understood by readers in other languages.
All this will soon be a reality, thanks to a project initiated by IIIT (Hyderabad) and eight other universities and institutes. To be precise, the beta translation solutions of a few languages will go live next month (June 2009).
The project, whose public Internet interface will be known as Sampark, will let users translate texts among various Indian languages. All one needs to do is copy-paste the text in an appointed box and press ‘enter’, and get the translated version in another box beside it. Not just text, you can translate the whole of a Web page. Copy the URL (a site’s Web address) and paste it in the relevant box in Sampark’s Web site. “You will get the translated page, with photos and other images intact,” says Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad), who is leading the team.
The nine institutions have roped in over 120 experts in computer engineering, language, and translators to take up the ‘machine translation’ programme, which is aimed at breaking the language barrier.
The project is broadly divided into two areas. Translation of the four Southern languages into Hindi (vice versa too) and translation of Bangla, Punjabi, Marathi and Urdu into Hindi (and back). Simultanesouly, the consortium is working on direct translations among Telugu-Tamil, Malayalam-Tamil. To begin with, the consortium has put two ‘systems’ Punjabi-Hindi and Urdu-Hindi beta versions live. “By June 2009 end, we will be adding Tamil-Hindi, Marathi-Hindi and Telugu-Hindi to the project,” Prof Sangal says.
How it works
Broadly, the machine translation happens in three phases — the source side, transfer aspects and the target side action. The two important factors in translation are grammar and dictionary. “Languages have many exceptions and idiosynchrosies. These will be addressed effectively,” Prof Sangal says.
On the source side (the text you want to translate), the machine analyses the text sentence by sentence and keeps a representation of the text. The analysis will include morphological analysis, how words are formed. It will check whether the text carries any local phrases. It will search for nouns and parts of speech before going for sentence analysis.
In the second phase (transfer phase), the machine does lexical and grammar transfer. “The grammars of source and target languages may not be similar. This phase would see change of grammatical structure. The later phase would involve target language generation.”
common architecture
The step-by-step process is done on a common architecture. This allows for addition of a new language to the project quite easily. “If you want to add Kashmiri, you need to develop an analyser, generator and add a Kashmiri-Hindi dictionary. These, in fact, are parallel dictionaries,” Prof Sangal says.
“The project, unlike earlier projects, hinges on dictionaries that give meanings based on concepts rather than just meanings,” Prof Uma Maheshwar Rao, who is working on the Telugu-Hindi aspect of the project, says.
Formed by the Union Ministry of Information Technology in 2006, the consortium comprises IITs (Kharagpur and Bombay), Anna University, C-DAC, University of Hyderabad, Tamil University Jadhavpur University, IISC (Bangalore) and IIIT (Allahabad).
Prof Rao, who works at the Centre of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at University of Hyderabad, says the Sampark project is more advanced than earlier attempts that sought to offer translation solutions.
The earlier efforts failed to take the meanings of the words contextually. Citing the example of the word ‘bank’, he points out that the earlier efforts would not make out whether it was a bank used in the expression river bank, or a bank that deals with money.
“In the present project, we cross-link words with all the synonyms in the other language. This will help resolve the ambiguity problem, the knottiest one in the translation process,” he explains.
The immediate task of the consortium is to add more servers and more engineering to make the machine faster.
“We are going to add three languages to the system every two months till November,” Prof Sangal says.
He, however, admits that it is not a complete translator. But the beta versions will definitely give a flavour of the meaning in the source language. You can see improvements constantly, he adds.
Machines learn!
Prof Sangal says the machine can learn based on the data you give it. Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this sentence? The one developed by the consortium, thanks to the conceptual dictionary, would look at the context and tell apart the meaning of the two chairs in the sentence. “Earlier, we used to give rules to the machine to follow. Now, we have algorithms to let the machines learn from this. We have combined artificial intelligence approach with the linguistic process,” he explains.
More to come
Busy finalising modules, the team members continue to set their eyes on long-term goals. “We will continue the long-term research independently and collaboratively. The next stage is to build more robust sentence analysers. They will be able to do translations more correctly. The quality of the output will go up,” he says. Prof Sangal, who has been working on machine translation for the last 25 years, says it is team work that helped the group to give a shape to the machine. “We discussed several issues physically and through mailing groups. We have set up sub groups to address specific issues.”
English to Indian languages
Simultaneously, a different consortium, in which IIIT-H is also a member, is working on translations from English to several Indian languages and back. C-DAC (Pune) is leading the consortium. The researchers take a different approach.
Unlike popular belief, English is a difficult language for the machine to understand. “Unlike Indian languages, there is a high degree of ambiguity. When a machine analyses, it has to do disambiguation, which is a difficult process,” Prof Sangal says. The research team is almost ready with the English-Hindi version, which is in test mode. At a later stage, these two different projects could technically work in tandem and offer users a better translation experience.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.business line.in/cgi- bin/print. pl?file=20090518 50070300. htm&date=2009/05/ 18/&prd=ew&
Research team turns to the “world’s first computational grammarian!”.
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/images/ 2009051850090301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Panini, the legendary Sanskrit grammarian of 5th century BC, is the world’s first computational grammarian! Panini’s work, Ashtadhyayi (the Eight-Chaptered book), is considered to be the most comprehensive scientific grammar ever written for any language.
According to Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad) and an expert on language computation, Panini’s epic treatise on grammar came to the rescue of language experts in making English unambiguous. English is more difficult (as far as machine translations are concerned) with a high degree of ambiguity.
Some words have different meanings, making the analysis (to facilitate translations) a difficult process. Making it disambiguous is quite a task, where Panini’s principles might be of use.
Ashtadhyayi, the earlier work on descriptive linguistics, consists of 3,959 sutras (or principles). These highly systemised and technical principles, some say, marked the rise of classical Sanskrit.
Sampark, the multi-institute effort launched to produce a translation engine, enabling users to translate tests from English to various languages, will use some of the technical aspects enunciated by Panini. “We looked at alternatives before choosing Panini,” Prof Sangal says.
Incidentally, Prof Sangal co-authored a book, Natural Language Processing – A Panini Perspective, a few years ago.
Besides the technical side, Panini would be of great help to researchers on the translation engine on the language side too.
A good number of words in almost all the Indian languages originate from Sanskrit. “That is great because Indian languages are related to each other,” Prof Sangal points out.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/ew/2009/ 05/18/stories/ 2009051850090300 .htm
Break the language barrier
Word for word: More on the Sampark initiative to enrich translation. .
Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this?
http://www.thehindu businessline. com/bline/ ew/2009/05/ 18/images/ 2009051850070301 .jpg
K.V. Kurmanath
Telugus, Kannadigas and Malayalis can read Subrahmanya Bharati, the legendary Tamil poet, and relish the sweetness in his poetry. Similarly, Premchand, Tagore, M T Vasudeva Nair, and U R Ananthamurthy too could be read and understood by readers in other languages.
All this will soon be a reality, thanks to a project initiated by IIIT (Hyderabad) and eight other universities and institutes. To be precise, the beta translation solutions of a few languages will go live next month (June 2009).
The project, whose public Internet interface will be known as Sampark, will let users translate texts among various Indian languages. All one needs to do is copy-paste the text in an appointed box and press ‘enter’, and get the translated version in another box beside it. Not just text, you can translate the whole of a Web page. Copy the URL (a site’s Web address) and paste it in the relevant box in Sampark’s Web site. “You will get the translated page, with photos and other images intact,” says Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT (Hyderabad), who is leading the team.
The nine institutions have roped in over 120 experts in computer engineering, language, and translators to take up the ‘machine translation’ programme, which is aimed at breaking the language barrier.
The project is broadly divided into two areas. Translation of the four Southern languages into Hindi (vice versa too) and translation of Bangla, Punjabi, Marathi and Urdu into Hindi (and back). Simultanesouly, the consortium is working on direct translations among Telugu-Tamil, Malayalam-Tamil. To begin with, the consortium has put two ‘systems’ Punjabi-Hindi and Urdu-Hindi beta versions live. “By June 2009 end, we will be adding Tamil-Hindi, Marathi-Hindi and Telugu-Hindi to the project,” Prof Sangal says.
How it works
Broadly, the machine translation happens in three phases — the source side, transfer aspects and the target side action. The two important factors in translation are grammar and dictionary. “Languages have many exceptions and idiosynchrosies. These will be addressed effectively,” Prof Sangal says.
On the source side (the text you want to translate), the machine analyses the text sentence by sentence and keeps a representation of the text. The analysis will include morphological analysis, how words are formed. It will check whether the text carries any local phrases. It will search for nouns and parts of speech before going for sentence analysis.
In the second phase (transfer phase), the machine does lexical and grammar transfer. “The grammars of source and target languages may not be similar. This phase would see change of grammatical structure. The later phase would involve target language generation.”
common architecture
The step-by-step process is done on a common architecture. This allows for addition of a new language to the project quite easily. “If you want to add Kashmiri, you need to develop an analyser, generator and add a Kashmiri-Hindi dictionary. These, in fact, are parallel dictionaries,” Prof Sangal says.
“The project, unlike earlier projects, hinges on dictionaries that give meanings based on concepts rather than just meanings,” Prof Uma Maheshwar Rao, who is working on the Telugu-Hindi aspect of the project, says.
Formed by the Union Ministry of Information Technology in 2006, the consortium comprises IITs (Kharagpur and Bombay), Anna University, C-DAC, University of Hyderabad, Tamil University Jadhavpur University, IISC (Bangalore) and IIIT (Allahabad).
Prof Rao, who works at the Centre of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies at University of Hyderabad, says the Sampark project is more advanced than earlier attempts that sought to offer translation solutions.
The earlier efforts failed to take the meanings of the words contextually. Citing the example of the word ‘bank’, he points out that the earlier efforts would not make out whether it was a bank used in the expression river bank, or a bank that deals with money.
“In the present project, we cross-link words with all the synonyms in the other language. This will help resolve the ambiguity problem, the knottiest one in the translation process,” he explains.
The immediate task of the consortium is to add more servers and more engineering to make the machine faster.
“We are going to add three languages to the system every two months till November,” Prof Sangal says.
He, however, admits that it is not a complete translator. But the beta versions will definitely give a flavour of the meaning in the source language. You can see improvements constantly, he adds.
Machines learn!
Prof Sangal says the machine can learn based on the data you give it. Look at the sentence — The Chair chairs the meeting. How will a machine understand this sentence? The one developed by the consortium, thanks to the conceptual dictionary, would look at the context and tell apart the meaning of the two chairs in the sentence. “Earlier, we used to give rules to the machine to follow. Now, we have algorithms to let the machines learn from this. We have combined artificial intelligence approach with the linguistic process,” he explains.
More to come
Busy finalising modules, the team members continue to set their eyes on long-term goals. “We will continue the long-term research independently and collaboratively. The next stage is to build more robust sentence analysers. They will be able to do translations more correctly. The quality of the output will go up,” he says. Prof Sangal, who has been working on machine translation for the last 25 years, says it is team work that helped the group to give a shape to the machine. “We discussed several issues physically and through mailing groups. We have set up sub groups to address specific issues.”
English to Indian languages
Simultaneously, a different consortium, in which IIIT-H is also a member, is working on translations from English to several Indian languages and back. C-DAC (Pune) is leading the consortium. The researchers take a different approach.
Unlike popular belief, English is a difficult language for the machine to understand. “Unlike Indian languages, there is a high degree of ambiguity. When a machine analyses, it has to do disambiguation, which is a difficult process,” Prof Sangal says. The research team is almost ready with the English-Hindi version, which is in test mode. At a later stage, these two different projects could technically work in tandem and offer users a better translation experience.
kurmanath@thehindu. co.in
http://www.business line.in/cgi- bin/print. pl?file=20090518 50070300. htm&date=2009/05/ 18/&prd=ew&
Saturday, November 8, 2008
India enters supercomputing race
A year old news , but nevertheless something that makes us proud.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7092339.stm
Ayush
A computer system designed in India has made it into a top ten of the world's fastest supercomputers.
Computer giant IBM continues to dominate the list - which is compiled twice a year - with a total of 232 out of the top 500 supercomputers.
Its Blue Gene/L supercomputer - used to ensure the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable - comes out at number one.
The Indian system - known as EKA - made it into fourth place.
The world's fastest supercomputer - BlueGene/L - has been significantly upgraded in the last six months.
It can now deliver a sustained performance of 478 trillion calculations per second (478 teraflops), nearly three times faster than any other machine on the list.
Petaflop barrier
TOP FIVE SUPERCOMPUTERS
IBM's BlueGene/L - 478 teraflops
IBM's BlueGene/P - 167.3 teraflops
SGI Altix ICE 8200 - 126.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c (EKA) - 117.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 102.8 teraflops
Second place went to another IBM system - a newer version of BlueGene/L known as BlueGene/P. The system, introduced this June is the first in a batch of IBM machines designed to operate at a petaflop and beyond.
Breaking the petaflop barrier - the ability to process 1,000 trillion calculations every second - has long been a key milestone in supercomputing and would allow highly detailed simulations.
For example in earthquake simulations it could show building-by-building movements of regions in earthquake zones, improving future structural designs.
India has also entered the exclusive list for the first time with a Hewlett-Packard designed system that has a performance of 117.9 teraflops.
Codenamed EKA - Sanskrit for number one - it is installed at the Computational Research Laboratories in Pune.
The system will be initially targeted at developing applications such as neural, molecular and crash simulations, and digital media animation and rendering.
"The supercomputer system will have a direct effect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.
The next step for the system is to put more applications on it.
"While the ranking is important the more important thing is to keep on improving performance and applications," said Mr Ramadorai.
Third place on the top 500 list went to a new supercomputing centre based in New Mexico.
Fifth place went to another Hewlett-Packard system installed at a Swedish government agency
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7092339.stm
Ayush
A computer system designed in India has made it into a top ten of the world's fastest supercomputers.
Computer giant IBM continues to dominate the list - which is compiled twice a year - with a total of 232 out of the top 500 supercomputers.
Its Blue Gene/L supercomputer - used to ensure the US nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable - comes out at number one.
The Indian system - known as EKA - made it into fourth place.
The world's fastest supercomputer - BlueGene/L - has been significantly upgraded in the last six months.
It can now deliver a sustained performance of 478 trillion calculations per second (478 teraflops), nearly three times faster than any other machine on the list.
Petaflop barrier
TOP FIVE SUPERCOMPUTERS
IBM's BlueGene/L - 478 teraflops
IBM's BlueGene/P - 167.3 teraflops
SGI Altix ICE 8200 - 126.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c (EKA) - 117.9 teraflops
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 102.8 teraflops
Second place went to another IBM system - a newer version of BlueGene/L known as BlueGene/P. The system, introduced this June is the first in a batch of IBM machines designed to operate at a petaflop and beyond.
Breaking the petaflop barrier - the ability to process 1,000 trillion calculations every second - has long been a key milestone in supercomputing and would allow highly detailed simulations.
For example in earthquake simulations it could show building-by-building movements of regions in earthquake zones, improving future structural designs.
India has also entered the exclusive list for the first time with a Hewlett-Packard designed system that has a performance of 117.9 teraflops.
Codenamed EKA - Sanskrit for number one - it is installed at the Computational Research Laboratories in Pune.
The system will be initially targeted at developing applications such as neural, molecular and crash simulations, and digital media animation and rendering.
"The supercomputer system will have a direct effect on the lives of Indians, espcially in areas such as earthquake and Tsunami modelling, modellings of the economy and potential for drug design," said Mr S. Ramadorai, chairman of the Computational Research Laboratories, which is a subsidiary of Indian firm Tata.
The next step for the system is to put more applications on it.
"While the ranking is important the more important thing is to keep on improving performance and applications," said Mr Ramadorai.
Third place on the top 500 list went to a new supercomputing centre based in New Mexico.
Fifth place went to another Hewlett-Packard system installed at a Swedish government agency
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Indian-origin mathematician honoured
Posted May 29th, 2008 by rkm
SYDNEY:Nalini Joshi, an Australian of Indian origin, has become only the third woman inmathematics to be elected to the prestigious Australian Academy of Sciences(AAS), founded in 1954 by Australian Fellows of the Royal Society ofLondon.Joshi, head of the School ofMathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, was made a fellow of AASin recognition of her life-long achievements in the field ofmathematics.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_Abroad/Indian-origin_mathematician_honoured/articleshow/3080938.cms
SYDNEY:Nalini Joshi, an Australian of Indian origin, has become only the third woman inmathematics to be elected to the prestigious Australian Academy of Sciences(AAS), founded in 1954 by Australian Fellows of the Royal Society ofLondon.Joshi, head of the School ofMathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, was made a fellow of AASin recognition of her life-long achievements in the field ofmathematics.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_Abroad/Indian-origin_mathematician_honoured/articleshow/3080938.cms
Sunday, May 18, 2008
As Jaipur bleeds, volunteers apply much-needed balm
Source: TIMES OF INDIA
16 May 2008, 0312 hrs IST,Avijit Ghosh,TNN
JAIPUR: Calamity often brings out the best in humans. And the Tuesday serial blasts in Jaipur was no exception. From sewadaars of Dera Sacha Sauda to RSS swayamsevaks, from Muslim youths of Pathan Chowk to Nirankaris, not to forget corporate houses and co-operative groups, everyone has set up their tents and stalls outside the city's Sawai Man Singh hospital where a majority of the blast victims are undergoing treatment. Donating blood, working as hospital's unofficial fourth-grade employees, ensuring relief money reaches the right people, offering free food, medicine and telephone services รข€” they are doing it all.
Dera Sacha's sevadars arrived with 30-odd members within an hour of the blast, says Kulbhushan, among the the organisation' s senior volunteers. By morning, the number of volunteers dressed in their cream and green uniform had swelled to 350. "So far we have donated 132 units of blood. We are ready to donate more units but the doctors say there is no more requirement, " he says. They plan to hang around for a couple of days more in case of an emergency.
The blast also prompted a group of Muslim youths who call themselves Pathan Chowk Vikas Samiti into action. Shahid Khan, an advocate and the group's leader, says that the decision to help the blast victims was carried out with rapidfire immediacy. "We not only helped lift the dead but also carried the injured to the hospital. Thirty of our members have donated blood," he says. Now, says Murad Baig from another youth group in the Amagarh area, their efforts are to ensure that the injured and the relatives of the dead get prompt relief. He says there is no competition, only co-operation, among the different groups.
"We have also been co-operating with the RSS volunteers and they with us," says Baig. Relatives of injured are happy with the work done by RSS volunteers who are prominently visible in their khaki shorts. "They have been almost working as ward boys," says Manoj Chhipa, whose father was injured in the blast. Even the Nirankaris of Jaipur have joined relief work in a big way. They have opened a 24-hour langar and donated 150 units of blood. Like the RSS volunteers, they also have sewa dal members who are acting as parallel fourth-grade staff. "We have the phone numbers of 647 volunteers with us. We have their blood group with us. We are ready to provide help at a moment's notice," says Satish Khurana of Sant Nirankari Mandal. That apart even a couple of mobile phone companies have set up their help vans where free calls can be made. Small organisations such as Seva Bharti, Jaipur and Shri Agarwal Vaishya Samaj Samiti have provided free services. Even Rajasthan Co-operative Consumer Federation has, as its assistant manager O P Verma puts it, come up with "a human response." The organisation is providing free medicine to every injured victim. So far, 16 have availed the facility.
Monday, May 5, 2008
PSLV-C9 blasts off from Sriharikota
PSLV-C9 blasts off from Sriharikota
28 Apr 2008, 0935 hrs IST
,INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK & AGENCIES
,INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK & AGENCIESSRIHARIKOTA: India's PSLV-C9 blasted off into space, carrying ten satellites including the country's latest remote sensing satellite CARTOSAT-2A, from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre here on Monday. Scientists cheered as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, in its thirteenth flight, soared into the clear sky in a perfect lift off at 9.23 am from the second launch pad. Besides the 690 kg CARTOSAT-2A, the PSLV is also carrying ISRO's Indian Mini Satellite-1 (IMS-1), weighing 83kg, and eight nano satellites built by universities and research institutes in Canada and Germany. While the CARTOSAT-2A, carrying state-of-the-art panchromatic camera (PAN), will be used for mapping purposes and management of natural resources, the IMS-1 will be used as a platform for trying out advanced technology in future launches. |
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Initiative by priest for Rama Navami celebrations
Namaste
A sankalpa karyakram was held at Sri Sainagar Weaker Section Society on Ugadi by the assistant priest of Raamalayam, Sri Srinadh who is also a swayamsevak. Twenty Two (22) families of the basti vowed to recite the japa "Sri Rama Jaya Rama Jaya Jaya Rama" 21 times everyday and lay off from liquor and meat during the 9 days ( Navaratri). They also put some rice grains aside every day which was then collected and used as "talambraalu" during the Seeta Rama Kalyanam during Sri Rama Navami
On Rama Navami day, the women of the basti came to the temple singing bhajans and then participated in the kalyana utsav.The initiative was taken by the families of Guru Gobind Prabhat Shaka, Saidabad, Bhagyanagar.
dhanyavaad
Ayush
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Bringing light to needy students
Bringing light to needy students
Wednesday April 2 2008 09:08 IST
Wednesday April 2 2008 09:08 IST
TUNIVALASA: Reddipalle Jagadish is just one among thousands of government teachers working in rural schools across the State.
There is nothing out of the ordinary about his duties at the Mandal Parishad Elementary School in Tunivalasa of Padmanabham mandal, about 15 km from Vizianagaram. But what makes him truly stand out is that since his appointment as a secondary grade teacher (SGT) in 2003, he has been doing whatever he can to make a difference to the lives of his students and has helped 45 indigent ones continue their education beyond Class X.
“I had seen many friends drop out of school and college due to financial problems. They ended up working in small jobs for paltry amounts only because they hadn’t the means to study further,” says the 27-year-old youth.
Jagadish spends about Rs 30,000 (nearly 50 per cent of his annual income) to sponsor students every year. Currently, he is helping 10 boys through Inter, four to complete graduation and a visually-impaired student B Ed.
“I am single. My family does not require my income. I keep some for my expenses and the rest is for helping the poor,” he says.
Many junior colleges in Vizianagaram who are familiar with Jagadish’s efforts get into the spirit of things by waiving the fee - in part or in two - while Jagadish takes care of the books and other expenses.
“Some friends too chip in. I hope to see these students go on to help others in need,” he says.
“Helping others is not a matter of capability, but rather that of commitment and determination,” observes Jagadish. And determination is a quality he has in ample measure.
It is proved by the fact that his own visual impairment has not come in the way of his lighting the path for others - and lightening their difficulties.
http://newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEA20080401224642&Title=Southern+News+%2D+
Andhra+Pradesh&rLink=0
Thursday, March 20, 2008
We do not want Sarabjit in exchange for terrorists: wife
http://www.hindu. com/2008/ 03/20/stories/ 2008032060470100 .htm
Amritsar: In a bold statement on Wednesday, the wife of Sarabjit Singh said the family did not want him repatriated from Pakistan if it meant India releasing some terrorists in exchange.
"Myself and my daughters would never like Sarabjit freed in exchange for any hardcore Pakistani terrorist lodged in Indian jails," Sarabjit's wife, Sukhpreet Kaur, told PTI.
Ms. Kaur said that for the family, "nothing is above the nation and we can't go against the interests of our motherland."
Sister's visit
She said the family was informed by journalists that Sarabjit's sister Dalbir Kaur would be going to Pakistan and the government had assured her a passport and visa.
"I would urge the government to give me and my daughters travel documents for visiting Sarabjit in the Kot Lakhpat Jail," she added. - PTI
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Setting Standards through Community Binding
An oasis of abstinence
Author: Shyamlal Yadav ; Publication: India Today; Dated: March 13, 2008
Author: Shyamlal Yadav ; Publication: India Today; Dated: March 13, 2008
As far as villages and Indian values go, Miragpur in Uttar Pradesh stands out as an examplary model of social conduct. Not only do people here keep away from tobacco, liquor and non-vegetarian food, they also do not consume cabbage, garlic and onion. This is a tradition they have been following for over 400 years- since the seventeenth century. Even the hukka, synonymous with north Indian villages, is frowned upon here.
Located near Deoband of Saharanpur, around 120 km from Delhi, Miragpur has a population of around 10,000. The village is proud that only two shopkeepers,out of a dozen, sell bidis and cigarettes.
Says Rajpal, a shopkeeper: "Only two shops have started storing bidi and cigarettes and that too for labourers from other states." According to the villagers, the unique tradition started in 1610 AD when mendicant Baba Faqira Das settled down here. The villagers, who still recall his saying,
"Jovan, dhan, jal nadi ka aur megha ki chhaon; kahe faqira sthir nahi, jaise jal par nao," (Youth, wealth, river water and the shade of clouds are not constant, like a boat on water), have built an ashram in his memory and offer prayers twice a day.
This is a tradition that is followed religiously. Says, village pradhan Karan Pal, "Once our daughters marry, they are free to decide whether they want to follow these traditions, but it is mandatory for our daughters-in- law to follow these once they step into the village." A fair, held in the first week of March every year, brings together their relatives from far flung places across the country.
The village which is located on the bank of river Kali is dominated by Gujjars but has a significant number of other castes-Valmiki, carpenters, Brahmins and Dheemars-as well.
The villagers are steadfast about their beliefs. Says Ompal Singh, a villager, "We do not let off the violators. Sometimes we punish them and at other times our guruji punishes them."
But they are not usually harsh on violators as they believe their guruji will take care of that. They say some families were wiped out due to unnatural deaths when they did not follow the tradition. The Gujjars strictly enforce prohibition and other restrictions amongst their community but allow other castes to take their own stand.
Ompal adds: "Though it is voluntary among other castes but they also follow these usually." But it is remarkable that the village, located in one of the richest farming areas, does not need either a campaigner or an activist minister to rid them of smoking and alcohol.
Located near Deoband of Saharanpur, around 120 km from Delhi, Miragpur has a population of around 10,000. The village is proud that only two shopkeepers,out of a dozen, sell bidis and cigarettes.
Says Rajpal, a shopkeeper: "Only two shops have started storing bidi and cigarettes and that too for labourers from other states." According to the villagers, the unique tradition started in 1610 AD when mendicant Baba Faqira Das settled down here. The villagers, who still recall his saying,
"Jovan, dhan, jal nadi ka aur megha ki chhaon; kahe faqira sthir nahi, jaise jal par nao," (Youth, wealth, river water and the shade of clouds are not constant, like a boat on water), have built an ashram in his memory and offer prayers twice a day.
This is a tradition that is followed religiously. Says, village pradhan Karan Pal, "Once our daughters marry, they are free to decide whether they want to follow these traditions, but it is mandatory for our daughters-in- law to follow these once they step into the village." A fair, held in the first week of March every year, brings together their relatives from far flung places across the country.
The village which is located on the bank of river Kali is dominated by Gujjars but has a significant number of other castes-Valmiki, carpenters, Brahmins and Dheemars-as well.
The villagers are steadfast about their beliefs. Says Ompal Singh, a villager, "We do not let off the violators. Sometimes we punish them and at other times our guruji punishes them."
But they are not usually harsh on violators as they believe their guruji will take care of that. They say some families were wiped out due to unnatural deaths when they did not follow the tradition. The Gujjars strictly enforce prohibition and other restrictions amongst their community but allow other castes to take their own stand.
Ompal adds: "Though it is voluntary among other castes but they also follow these usually." But it is remarkable that the village, located in one of the richest farming areas, does not need either a campaigner or an activist minister to rid them of smoking and alcohol.
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