KCR takes a road trip
March 28, 2015 was the first Rama Navami to be celebrated in newly-born Telangana. As is the custom, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao travelled to the Bhadrachalam Ramachandra Swamy temple in Khammam district for the festival. The historic 17th century temple is said to have been built by built by Bhakta Ramadas who was tahasildar of the town at the time. Devotees from across the country travel to Bhadrachalam on Rama Navami to witness the divine nuptials. KCR attended the celebrations with his wife, daughter-in-law and grandson and other relatives. He travelled the distance of 315 km from Hyderabad to Bhadrachalam by road which had security officials worried since a part of the road falls in a Naxal-sensitive zone. The Telangana CM who often uses a chopper to travel to districts, however, chose to travel in his convoy, making a stop at Suryapet and reached Bhadrachalam the night before Rama Navami. About 2,000 police personnel were deployed as part of the security arrangements. The road trip took KCR's convoy around five hours. Officials say KCR wanted to assess for himself the road conditions in the tribal-dominated district of Khammam. The government of Telangana was up in arms about the handing over seven mandals in Khammam district to Andhra Pradesh as part of the Polavaram (irrigation project) Bill.
PR exercise by Prakash Javadekar
The KBR Park in Hyderabad, one of the greenest and cleanest lung spaces in Hyderabad usually has several VIP walkers including ministers, bureaucrats, actors, sportspersons and many wannabe P3 people. So perhaps it was the best place for Union Minister for Environment and Forests Prakash Javadekar to "take a walk" literally to emphasize environmental consciousness. The Minister sought to publicise the urban green campaign of the NDA government and hoped that people would start being more conscious about plastic garbage. Interacting with walkers, Javadekar said that plastic bags are strewn all over Indian cities and villages which lie around for years together. Many cows and buffaloes end up eating these plastic bags and die as a result, he said. The Minister said that the Centre was planning stricter rules to enforce the plastic carry-bag ban in India.
Dying breed of physical bookstores
Ever since Flipkart and Amazon came and changed the rules of book buying, business has died a slow death for smaller bookstore owners. The A A Hussain & Co bookstore in Abids, founded in 1949, is the latest victim to the online book sale business. One of the oldest bookshops in Hyderabad, AA Hussain & Co was the place to visit whenever you wanted to buy any book, be it a best-seller, a classic, one on poetry or simply to smell the pages. Bereft of any gloss, AA Husain was started by Riazat Husain who also sold rare stamps and postcards. The current owner, Asif Husain Arastu, began to feel the pinch in 2010 when sales started falling. Customers dwindled as the online shopping revolution took over and customers no longer felt the need to walk into a dusty bookstore 15 km away simply to buy a book. The quaint and crowded bookstore is now making way for a shopping mall. Husain has decided not to continue in the business anymore because of the commercial disadvantages. Hyderabadis are bidding a teary farewell to a chapter in history.
A ray of hope for IDPL
The Centre has announced a Rs 900-crore revival package for the defunct Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd. About 50% of this investment will be made in Hyderabad's Balanagar facility and the rest in Gurgaon and Rishikesh. The announcement was made by the Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir at a conference of the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research. The Minister said that at least one drug would be manufactured at IDPL from July this year. This is following the guidelines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" slogan. The Minister said reviving the IDPL, which closed down in 1996, was part of an agenda to boost bulk drug manufacturing in India. It is planned that medicines manufactured here will initially be supplied to Defense hospitals and other establishments covered by the CGHS. Though Hyderabad is still considered a pharma hub, it was IDPL which gave the city its initial boost in the industry. During the Surat pneumonic plague in 1994, IDPL ran three shifts in its plants to produce the bulk drug tetracycline at a time when the antibiotic began disappearing from shelves of medical shops owing to panic buying.
Seeding fitness food
Fitness and nutrition junkies in Hyderabad who believe in juice detoxes and "super" foods such as the horribly expensive quinoa grain would do well to look at more humble options such as millets. The ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) in Patancheru, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, has for long encouraged work on sorghum, millets, chickpea and pigeon pea. It is now receiving encouragement from the Telangana government. "The Government of Telangana is committed to encouraging the setting up of a Seed Export Accelerator (SEP) and Sorghum Export Development Platform (SEDP). These initiatives will help farmers have greater access to quality seeds and will also improve their financial condition," says Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy. The Telangana Government's new industrial policy will include the setting up of food processing parks in Nizamabad, Khammam, Medak and Ranga Reddy districts of Telangana to boost the food processing scenario.
How the cookie crumbled
It was a day of tears and heartache when India lost the World Cup semi-finals to Australia. The World Champion Aussies have proven beyond doubt that they are miles ahead of any other team. But that is another story. On the day of the semis, across several pubs, hookah and coffee lounges in the city, practically every Hyderabadi donned the blue jersey to cheer the home town only to be left red-faced by the end of it all. MNCs and IT offices put up projectors and allowed employees to watch the match in shifts but the 95-run loss was too much to digest for many. The only tool of distraction was of course WhatsApp and the jokes on Virat Kohli's stellar one-run performance.
Readers have of course seen and forwarded them all, in anger and as a desperate measure to forget India's defeat.
But this is the joke that I feel described the crumble-under-pressure Indian team perfectly:
India's batting Line Up
1.Rohit
2.Dhawan
3.Kohli
4.Rahane
5.Raina
6.Dhoni
7.O palanhare,
8.nirgun aur nyare,
9.tumare bin hamara
10.kauno nahee
