Monthly Archives: February 2016

On a bigger court-Kunta Pani Rao

Kunta Pani Rao
Kunta Pani Rao

City badminton official Kunta Pani Rao will be a referee for the BWF Super Series

For Kunta Pani Rao, the affable badminton official for the last four decades, the recently-concluded Badminton Asia team championship in Hyderabad was one more assignment that enhanced his value and contribution for the successful conduct of the event as the Badminton World Federation (BWF) referee.

This 64-year-old soft-spoken person has now been nominated as one of the three BWF referees for the BWF Super Series in Delhi next month.

“Yes, it has been a long journey which began first as a Sports Authority of India coach. Those days, the salary was less, no pension and Provident Fund benefits and the threat of being transferred also was there. Just then I got the job in the State Bank of India which I took up to spend more time in badminton,” recalls Pani Rao.

Interestingly, when Pani Rao officiated for the first time ever in the Junior National, he saw Madhumita Bist (now India’s women’s coach) win the title in the early 1970s. “Things have changed – in some issues for the good. But, the job basically remains the same. To be a good and respected umpire or referee, you have to know the game better and not just thrive on the technicalities,” reminds the veteran official who owes his growth to former BAI secretary Ahmed Hussain and to the current BAI secretary (tournaments) K.Ch. Punnaiah Choudhary.

This Hyderabadi, who officiated in the 1986 Seoul Asian Games, has turned an international umpire in 1994 and having crossed the superannuation age of 55, is now a qualified BWF referee which means he can do the job till he turns 65.

“Essentially, the referee is the overall in-charge of the tournament, responsible for the posting of umpires, finalising the schedule and resolving any on-court disputes,” reminds Pani Rao. “Every official is under scrutiny for the Badminton Asia Confederation makes a critical assessment of every technical official and allots the next assignment accordingly,” he points out.

Pani Rao welcomes the instant review system in place when a player opts for a video review of any point in dispute. “This vastly reduces the scope for errors by line judges. But again, it is available only on one court, instead it could be extended to other courts as well for better results,” he feels.

Pani Rao is a big fan of the Indian badminton legend Prakash Padukone. “Prakash is a gentleman to the core. I was officiating in Vijayawada when Syed Modi shocked him in the Senior National final in 1981. I vividly remember Prakash, then All England champion, had come two days late for that event. He was not well in fact and found it difficult to adjust to the conditions there,” recalls Phani Rao.

What next? “Once I retire from the BWF role next year, I would love to take up coaching which I enjoy a lot. I was mostly the State coach in those days and played my bit in the evolution of many champions like Manoj Kumar, Gopichand and Chetan Anand,” he signs off.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by V.V.Subrahmanyam / Hyderabad – December 24th, 2016

Prestigious honour for OU academic

Dr. C. Manoharachary, senior scientist of National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), was recently awarded ‘Indian Phytopathological Society Recognition Award’ for the year 2015 in recognition of his services to the field of plant pathology.

The Indian Phytopathological Society conferred the prestigious honour on him in New Delhi recently, informed a press release from Dr. Pratibha Sharma, secretary of the society.

Dr. Manocharachary did his post doctoral work in Germany. An acknowledged academic in his own right, Prof. Manoharachary specialises in biodiversity, taxonomy, conservation and bioprospecting of fungi, plant pathogens, microbes, mycorrhizae, lichens, medicinal plants, besides others. He discovered 20 new genera, 120 new species and 500 new additions of fungi.

He guided 50 PhDs, published 540 research papers in reputed national and international journals, besides authoring 28 books.

Dr. Manoharachary served the Osmania University in various capacities for over 40 years.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / Staff Reporter / Hyderabad – February 26th, 2016

Cyient Centre Comes Up near Warangal

Hyderabad :

Cyient has announced that it will establish a state-of-the-art technology development centre in Madikonda Special Economic Zone near Warangal.

CM KCR will lay its foundation stone on Friday. Cyient is a global provider of engineering, data analytics, operations solutions.

The development Centre will focus on advanced geographic information system, remote sensing and photogrammetry technologies, catering to a host of solutions for transportation, utilities and communication sectors. The centre will cover an area of 70,000 sq ft, said a release issued by company.

Cyient executive chairman BVR Mohan Reddy said the Warangal centre shows Cyient’s recognition of role of tier-2 cities in growth of the nation.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Telangana / by Express News Service / February 19th, 2016

Rare books, methodically sorted

Haziq and Mohi Rare Book Suppliers at Mubarak Chowk near Charminar is all set for a massive overhaul.-Photo: Mohammed Yousuf
Haziq and Mohi Rare Book Suppliers at Mubarak Chowk near Charminar is all set for a massive overhaul.-Photo: Mohammed Yousuf

After his death, siblings of Ahmed Bin Mohammed Bafanna, owner of Haziq and Mohi Rare Book Suppliers, start digitising and categorising the inventory.

our months after 67-year-old Ahmed Bin Mohammed Bafanna breathed his last leaving behind a treasure trove in terms of literature, his four-decade-old shop which sells rare books is all set to be brought back to life. While it will take time to return things to full functionality, it is nevertheless something that book lovers have been waiting for.

And if you were one of those people wondering about the future of Haziq and Mohi Rare Book Suppliers, then there is good news. Mr. Ahmed’s five siblings have now begun sorting and rearranging the range of books in the shop subject wise, and they also plan to digitise the entire collection. “We started work in December, and have categorised more than 10,000 books so far,” said Khaled Bafanna, the youngest of the siblings.

The work to categorise all the books in Haziq and Mohi will take at least six months more, given that nobody in the family except Mr. Ahmed had any idea of which book is where.

“He had everything on his mind. We have started separating them under categories like Islamic literature and history. It will make things easier, as we would know how to find things. And we don’t even know the total number of books that are here,” explained Khaled. After Mr. Ahmed’s sudden demise, there was fear among his customers that his store would be shut down. Perhaps the fact that the store was closed for about 40 days after his death may have prompted that idea. For instance, a researcher from the US who was in Hyderabad last December went back disappointed, as the store was closed. The shop is a place where any literature lover could get lost in. Filled with books everywhere, there is just enough space for one person to walk through it, literally. A second person would have to either go outside to give way, or turn sideways to let another person pass. And the books also perhaps live up to the store’s name, as all of them inside are titles that would pique anyone’s curiosity.

For example, some of the books on display there are Aazadi (in Urdu), Women in Delhi Sultanate by Lokesh Chandra Nand, Timardaari (in Urdu) and another one titled Hyderabad Gazetteer by A. Khan. “Once my son’s exams are over, I will also create an email ID for the shop, so that our customers can reach us easily,” said Khaled, who is helped by his brothers to run the shop. And without Mr. Ahmed, how do they fix the cost of the books they sell? “We fix the price based on the date of the books, i.e. how old they are. And also, in case we cannot get another print of a particular book, we will only make Photostat copies of the original and give it, to preserve the copy we have,” he said, sitting where his eldest brother once sat in front of the shop on a small stool. Khaled and his brothers will also be relying on the same book sellers who would inform whenever a rare book would be available in the market for them to purchase. Mr. Ahmed is survived by his five brothers Ali, Abdallah, Salem, Osman and Khaled, all of whom maintain the store together. The shop is open from 12 noon to 7 p.m., and customers can contact Mr. Khaled on 93940 21930.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Yunus Y. Lasania / February 22nd, 2016

Lallaguda Carriage Workshop – a unique unit of Railways

Railway Carriage Workshop (Mechanical) of South Central Railway at Lalaguda in Hyderabad on Monday. -Photo: G. Ramakrishna / The Hindu
Railway Carriage Workshop (Mechanical) of South Central Railway at Lalaguda in Hyderabad on Monday. -Photo: G. Ramakrishna / The Hindu

Once the South Central Railway was formed on October 2, 1966, the workshop became a major facility for the zone and it was in 1997 that it got its current name as Carriage Workshop.

Do you know how long it takes for a railway coach to go through a periodic overhaul (POH) and what is the average lifespan of a coach? How many hours are spent on cleaning up a coach after every long, overnight trip? How many wheel and axle assemblies does a coach have and how much does each of the assemblies weigh?

Answers to these and more questions were made available to the media on Monday, during a rare, ‘Media Visit’ to the Carriage Workshop at Lallaguda, run by the South Central Railway (SCR), that maintains the approximately 5,000 coaches / bogies with a similar workshop near Tirupati.

A workshop with a 123-year-old history, it was born on September 30, 1893 under the aegis of the ‘Nizam Guaranteed State Railways’ with the task of undertaking POH and repairs to broad and metre gauge steam locomotives, coaches and wagons.

It was then brought under the purview of the Nizam State Railways and later in 1951 was under the control of the Central Railways.

Once the South Central Railway was formed on October 2, 1966, the workshop became a major facility for the zone and it was in 1997 that it got its current name as Carriage Workshop. It is now going through a major, Rs.90-crore expansion as a part of which Rs.30 crore has already been spent, said Chief Workshop Engineer Som Kuwar, who has the responsibility of maintaining the 5,000-odd coaches in the two workshops.

Mr. Kuwar said the Lallaguda facility was the first workshop on Indian Railways to implement the Workshop Information System (WISE) developed by the Centre for Railway Information System, apart from having a fully-automated Distributor Valve Testing Machine uniquely-designed in-house by the Indian Railways and a Coach Management System software for day-to-day monitoring of POH.

A visit to the Lallaguda workshop shows the scale of operations that are undertaken by the approximately 3,500-odd workforce at the facility. From achieving the highest Out-Turn of 5.8 coaches a day the number today stands at roughly about seven coaches a working day. The facility complex that spans 13.97 hectares with a covered area of 4.25 hectares and a track length of 8.25 km operates on a budget of Rs.267.5 crore in the current financial year.

Its activities include overhaul of all passenger-carrying coaches including those manufactured by the Integral Coach Factory and Rail Coach Factory, Diesel Electrical and Diesel, Hydraulic Multiple Units, the MMTS coaches, the German-made Linke Hofmann Busch coaches and those of the Double-Decker trains apart from all departmental coaches, said Deputy Chief Mechanical Engineer Hemu Singh in a power-point presentation.

The workshop maintains a whopping 55 wheel and axle assemblies every day using a specialised lathe machine. The checks for wheel and axle that has a normal life span of six years, include ultrasound to detect internal cracks and one crack is enough for it to be scrapped. The average lifespan of a coach is about 25 years, mediapersons were informed.

The Head of the Lallaguda facility, Chief Workshop Manager Uday Kumar Reddy explained that among its unique selling propositions (USP) were maintenance of the Heritage John Morris Fire Engine that is an exhibit at the National Rail Museum in New Delhi and a predominantly wooden-body coach built in the year 1890 and is stationed at the workshop here itself.

Summing up, SCR’s Chief Public Relations Officer M. Umashankar Kumar said the fact that the workshop was gearing up to take up POH of coaches once in two years was an indicator of its improving efficiency levels. The POH apart, officials work on checking and cleaning up of every coach for about six hours after every overnight trip.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Suresh Krishnamoorthy / Hyderabad – February 22nd, 2016

ZP school teacher to present paper at international science meet

A government teacher and science communicator Voore Gurunadha Rao from Mahabubabad has been invited to New Delhi to present a research paper at the International Conference “India’s Scientific Wisdom: Emerging Worldview”.

Mr. Gurunatha Rao works as science teacher at Zilla Parishad High School at Kambalapally village in Mahabubabad mandal.

The two-day international conference jointly organised by Indian Science Writers’ Association (ISWA) International Centre for Science Communication (ICSC) Indian Science Communication Society (ISCOS) at Haryana Bhavan would be held on February 27 and 28.

He will be presenting a paper during the Scientific Session IV Scientific Wisdom: Reshaping the Emerging Worldview at the conference to be organised on February 28.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Telangana / by Special Correspondent / Warangal – February 22nd, 2016