80 tribals join hands to repair the connecting road in just a couple of hours
Instead of waiting for things to happen, the Adivasi villagers of Mallapur in Indervelli mandal got down to making things happen. They made the difficult looking task of repairing road look so easy as 80 of them got down to obliterating dangerous potholes on the connecting road in just a couple of hours.
About 80 tribal individuals, one each from a family, joined the effort to repair the road. The decision to repair the road, on their own, was taken by the village development committee.
The Project Officer, Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), Utnoor, R.V. Karnan who has adopted Tejapur gram panchayat of which Mallapur is a constituent village, was all praise for the effort. He even contributed his mite by digging gravel and spreading it on the road during his visit to the village as part of Grama Jyothi programme on Tuesday.
Visiting agricultural fields in Mallapur, the Project Officer assured the tribal farmers of purchasing the indigenous variety of maize and minor millets which they have cultivated during the season. “This was part of the action plan devised to make Mallapur a seed bank for indigenous variety crops,” he said.
The ITDA has already purchased about 200 kg of millet seeds from the village. “These have been distributed among Adivasi farmers in Wankidi mandal under the Centrally sponsored Vanabandhu Kalyan Yojana,” Mr. Karnan pointed out.
“We will pay you more than the market price,” the Project Officer said while inquiring about the market rate of regular hybrid variety of millets and other food grains. He said payments will be made through the special committee on agriculture formed in the village under the Grama Jyothi programme.
Earlier, Mr. Karnan exhorted the villagers to go in for planting more number of custard apple trees under the Telanganaku Haritha Haram programme. He said the fruits fetched good price in the open market to bring in healthy income for the farmers.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Telangana / by S. Harpal Singh / Mallapur (Adilabad Dist) – August 19th, 2015