I-T officials join hands to transform this Telangana village

The group took up avenue plantations covering the entire village, and trained 45 youngsters from the village as volunteers who were responsible for conducting regular Shramadhan programmes.

Sangareddy: With their hearts set on contributing their mite to rural development, a group of Income- Tax officials from Hyderabad adopted Gongulur, a village in Sangareddy district, and brought about considerable change in less than two years. What is laudable about their effort is that they adopted a participative approach that ensured the involvement of all the villagers in the activities undertaken by them.

The initiative was launched in June 2019, when the group of I-T officials led by R K Paliwal, then Director General of Income- Tax Department, adopted Gongulur in Pulkal mandal. Paliwal entrusted the responsibility of developing the village and executing the works to Deputy Commissioner Dr Sudhakar Nayak, who incidentally hails from Sangareddy district.

Though Paliwal was subsequently transferred from Hyderabad, the IRS officials led by Chief Income Tax Commissioner, Hyderabad, J B Mohapatra carried on the good work and extended the same support to Dr Nayak to implement all the programmes at Gongulur without any interruption.

The group took up avenue plantations covering the entire village, and trained 45 youngsters from the village as volunteers who were responsible for conducting regular Shramadhan programmes. Involving the teachers of the government schools, the I-T officials conducted essay, elocution and other competitions every Sunday to help school students improve their confidence levels.

After setting up a library with over 5,000 books, the officials introduced a unique programme wherein teachers were asked to give a book each to all the students who were required to present an oral review of the book every Sunday. This exercise paid rich dividends as seen in the case of Gongamma, a student who would not get on to the stage to speak two years ago.

She impressed Finance Minister T Harish Rao, Collector M Hanumantha Rao and I-T officials with her articulate speech during a programme at her village recently. Gongamma told Telangana Today that the lockdown period was put to best use, under the guidance of Dr Nayak and teachers, utilising the bank of books. “Not only students from Gongulur, children from neighbouring villages also used to come to the library to participate in the activities,” she said.

Inspired by the all round development in the village, high school teacher Ganga Kasinath said most of the teachers preferred spending their time in the village on Sundays training their students rather than spending the weekends elsewhere. “This resulted in a perceptible change in the attitude of students,” he said. Believing in the Gandhian philosophy, the I-T officials decided to set up a cottage industry in the village to provide income to the local women. Since there is a huge demand for masks, 20 women from the village were encouraged to make masks. Over 37,000 masks stitched by them have been supplied to various departments.

The women are also being trained to make soaps, and since the village is located close to river Manjira, they have decided to sell the products produced by the villagers under the brand ‘Manjira.’ Harish Rao, appreciating the efforts of the villagers, said the administration would soon establish a pulses mill to help them sell pulses under Manjira brand. “Not only will the women be able to supplement their family incomes, but also sell cheaper and quality products to people,” he said.

 

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