Aid to Motorists

Have found a fascinating application at this link here which will help motorists compute road distances to Tiruvannamalai from their native place. Hope it helps.

Don Bosco Siharam

Last week some friends and I drove to the North side of Arunachala to visit Devanandayal Village. In the distance we could see a very handsome building and we wondered if it was some kind of school or college. Well, fate intervened and we were soon to find that this interesting campus is in fact the Don Bosco Siharam Institute (Salesian Institute for the Holistic Advancement of the Rural and the Marginalized)

The below photograph is of Father Edwin Vasanthan who very kindly showed us around the Don Bosco facility.

The Institute which was opened on the 24th May, 2007 now offers courses in Computer Application, Hardware Training and in Catering. Below some photographs of an IT class.

Most of the students are recruited from remote villages of outlying Districts and are housed at the Institute's boarding facilities located on their 7 acre campus.

Below the dining room and kitchen which has seriously sized pots to cater for the large number of students.




The Salesians of Don Bosco are a Catholic organisation and as well as the IT Institute at Tiruvannamalai also have primary and secondary schools (with boarding facilities) for orphaned and semi-orphaned students in Tamil Nadu and other South India States, a college and some technical schools.

To find out more about Don Bosco Siharam, please check out this month's Arunachala Grace News which will be sent out to inboxes tomorrow. If you wish to become a free subscriber to the monthly Arunachala Newsletter, please fill out the facility at the left hand column of this page.

Land Redistribution

The third phase of free land distribution scheme of two-acre plots to poor and agricultural labourers will be launched at Chennavaram village, Tiruvannamalai District on March 17, 2007.

The State scheme, one of the major poll promises for the DMK government in its first two phases released 50,077 acres amongst 50,189 families. An official release said that about 2,500,000 acres would be distributed across the State in the third phase.

There are 640 acres in one square mile. Thus If the above official figures are correct, the Statewide total of all phases of the redistribution of land will come to approximately 4,000 square miles. Which is a sizeable chunk of the total area of the 50,215 sq miles total area of Tamil Nadu.

The Department of Agriculture will develop the land before handing it to the farmers. Works including land reclamation, contour bunding, clearing of bushes and wild growth, agronomical practices, removal of stones, sinking of deep borewells, soil testing and establishment of pump sets are to be done by the Department of Agriculture free of cost for the benefit of small and marginal farmers.