Kakinada: Vedic students face immense hardships

Kakinada: The Vedic students of MSN Charities are facing hardships due to the poor infrastructure facilities and unhygienic surroundings. Though the State and Central governments are campaigning about cleanliness, the officials of the Vedic School are turning a deaf ear and not caring about the cleanliness of the premises.

Though the MSN Charities has plenty of funds and properties worth crores of rupees, the office-bearers have utterly failed to provide the basic infrastructure facilities like drinking water, toilets and others to the students.

The students are compelled to fetch drinking water from a distance of one km and the water tanks on the school premises are not cleaned for months together. The streetlights near the school are either burnt out or damaged and the whole area remains in darkness. Due to the unhygienic conditions, the students face the dangerous situation from snakes and other dangerous creatures. The students are afraid to move even on the school premises.

The students request the school officials to repair fans in the school as summer is round the corner to make them able to get good sleep. In the absence of fans they could not study even during daytime. As there are no mats for them during night time they are forced to sleep on the floor, they said.

In Vedic Schools, generally, the students are served some food like Chakkera Pongali (Sweet Pongal), Daddojanam (Curd Rice), Yellow Rice, Hot Pongal and others since they need nutritious food to chant Vedic hymns with loud voice without deviating from the Vedic procedure. They must eat nutritious food for breakfast. But, in the MSN Charities Vedic School such breakfast is not served to the students and are served lunch directly in the afternoon.

According to health precautionary methods, the students in particular or people in general should not keep their stomach empty as it will be harmful to their health. The students alleged that they are also not served good food. Many Vedic Pundits say that nowadays, the number of young people studying Vedas declined drastically. A few years ago, there used to be more than 50 Vedic students in the MSN Charities Vedic School but now the number came down to 15. Some of the students left the school due to lack of basic infrastructure facilities and also unable to bear the harassment of the Vedic School management particularly Executive Officer Chalapathi Rao.

Three months back, Deputy Commissioner of Endowments B Durga Prasad came here and expressed concern over the poor condition prevailing in the Vedic School. Reprimanding the Executive Officer of the School Chalapathi Rao he instructed him to provide breakfast and brunch (taking food between breakfast and lunch) to the students without fail. He said that the institution has 100 acres of land and properties, but the Executive Officer is not unable to provide proper food and accommodation to even for 15 Vedic students.

Durga Prasad also said that the school officials should encourage the students to opt for Vedic studies for the existence of the Vedic School. But, till now, there are no changes in the school environment and the problems remained the same. Besides, the school officials threaten the students if they tell their problems to others, particularly to the media, they would be sent out from the school.

The Vedic scholars say that due to the behaviour of the Executive Officer, the students were discouraged to study Vedas, and they may not evince interest to study the Vedic Sciences.

Speaking to The Hans India here on Monday, Chalapathi Rao said that he was making efforts to rectify the things and there were no problems for the students in Vedic School. Denying that there were not enough facilities in the school, he said that all facilities are being provided in the school.

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Vedic students having lunch

Deputy Commissioner of Endowments B Durga Prasad playing caroms with students at Vedic School during his visit two months ago