National facility to provide legal advice; database on anvil
In an effort to support survivors of domestic violence and burn violence, the International Foundation for Crime Prevention and Victim Care (PCVC) launched a national hotline facility here on Sunday. The numbers are 044-43111143 and 18001027282 (24-hour toll-free number). It was inaugurated by Elke Büdenbender, wife of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Prasanna Gettu, founder of PCVC, said the facility would help women get counselling, legal awareness and information. The PCVC helpline receives about 300 new crisis calls every year.
“The national hotline facility aims to reach out to more women and will be staffed by trained personnel. This is piloted in the State for two years and We want to create a database of stakeholders in all districts of a State. The database will have everything that survivors will require, from information on rehabilitation and government schemes to job opportunities,” she said.
“Many don’t know that such a helpline, that we already have, exists and people who call find the number through the internet; more women who want to reach out need to know about the hotline,” she added.
Research done in four locations — the National Capital Region, Telangana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu — has revealed that incidents of domestic violence are quite high
Rehabilitation process
Swetha Shankar of PCVC said 90% of burn violence incidents are reported as accidents and 75% of the victims die. Many calls from burn survivors come from the Kilpauk Medical College (KMC) and they need a sustained rehabilitative process, which takes a few years. But many of them don’t come for the rehabilitation because there may not be post-hospital services available or because their families are not keen. “For instance, of the 800 women who came to KMC last year, only 80 came for rehabilitation,” she said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Staff Reporters / Chennai – March 26th, 2018
Doctors of the Department of Internal Medicine at Government Royapettah Hospital have brought out a book, Manual of Toxicology — An Indian Perspective, which, they say, will fill a lacunae in the knowledge about poisons.
“Most toxicology manuals are silent on many of the Indian posions, as they have been written from a western perspective. This book is based on our experience treating cases involving toxins,” says Dr. A. Shaik Sulaiman Meeran, one of the doctors who spearheaded this book project.
Dr. P. Paranthaman was the editor-in-chief. Dr. Sulaiman, Dr. A. Samuel Dinesh and Dr. D. Venkateswaralu served as associate editors and Dr. P. Raja as co-editor. The book has been brought out by Chess Educational Publishers.
Dr. Sulaiman says that knowing the sources of danger will prevent accidental ingesting of poisons or strikes by venomous reptiles and insects.
Knowing where to seek help will be a crucial factor in recovery.
He says snake bite cases from the southern suburbs, which include Tambaram and surrounding areas, parts of Old Mahabalipuram Road and East Coast Road are common. Anti-venom serum for treatment of bites by cobra, viper and krait is available. Government general hospitals have them.
Residents of semi-urban areas can face the problem of snake bikes, it is available in primary health centres, he says. Here is a word of caution. “Ninety percent of the sea snakes are poisonous and there is no anti-venom serum for them. Only supportive treatment can be given. Sea snakes are sometimes found near fishermen’s settlements. They get entangled in fishermen’s nets and are brought ashore. There is always a high possibility of finding them near fishermen’s hamlets on East Coast Road,” says Dr. Sulaiman.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / March 23rd, 2018
The Hindu ‘World of Women 2018’ awards that were given away on Friday celebrated talent, excellence and the accomplishments of women across various fields. The awardees were recognised not only for their contribution to their respective fields but also to society at large.
Nirmala Lakshman, director, The Hindu Group, welcomed the audience and the chief guest Kiran Bedi, Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, gave away the awards to 11 achievers.
Mrs. Y.G. Parthasarathy, founder and dean, P. S. B. B. Group of Institutions, was awarded The Hindu Torchbearer award — recognising excellence in education. The 92-year-old came to receive the award with her grand daughter-in-law, who spoke on her behalf. “I began my career as a journalist with The Hindu. I was the first woman journalist back then and I remember interviewing the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. I still have miles to go in keeping up with technological developments. I accept this award with all humility,” she read.
R. Tara, director, SCARF, received the Excellence in Healthcare award. She recalled the story of a young girl, Shanti, from a village in Tamil Nadu, who topped her school but developed schizophrenia. Since her brother didn’t know how to handle her, she was chained near a cowshed for over a year. “Today, she can take up a part-time job,” she said.
Beno Zephine N.L., the first visually-challenged IFS officer, was awarded the Inspiration award, in absentia. The Entrepreneur award was given to Nina Reddy, joint managing director, Savera Hotel; Visalakshi Ramaswamy, founder of M.Rm.Rm. Cultural Foundation, received The Hindu Agriculture and Rural Development Award. Akhila Srinivasan, MD, Shriram Life Insurance, was presented The Hindu Business Woman Award. The team from Tamil Nadu, which won the 23rd National Women’s Football Championship, was awarded The Hindu Flying Colours Award for Excellence in Sports.
Supriya Sahu, IAS, Director General of Doordarshan, received the Contribution to Society award. “My journey as an IAS officer from U.P. and Bihar to Kanniyakumari and The Nilgiris district has taught me how much I can serve as a government officer,” she said. Dancer Malavika Sarukkai, who received The Hindu Heritage in Arts and Entertainment Award, spoke of the need to look at dance beyond the ‘performative’. Actor Nayanthara won the Dazzler award.
Lifetime of service
The Hindu Lifetime Achievement Award was given to V. Shanta, founder/chairperson, Cancer Institute, Adyar. “I dedicate this award to the memory of Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy. It is 62 years today and I continue with this institution. We have been unique because we continue the same ethos even when health, which was a human service, has now become an industry,” she said.
“Each one of us women has fought our own battles to reach the centrestage; we must continue to be a support system for each other,” said Ms. Bedi.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Staff Reporter / Chennai – March 24th, 2018
The Dravidian language family’s four largest languages — Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu — have literary traditions spanning centuries, of which Tamil reaches back the furthest, researchers said.
The Dravidian languagefamily, consisting of 80 varieties spoken by nearly 220 million people across southern and central India, originated about 4,500 years ago, a study has found.
This estimate is based on new linguistic analyses by an international team, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, and the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun.
The researchers used data collected first-hand from native speakers representing all previously reported Dravidian subgroups. The findings, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, match with earlier linguistic and archaeological studies.
South Asia, reaching from Afghanistan in the west and Bangladesh in the east, is home to at least six hundred languages belonging to six large language families, including Dravidian, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan.
The Dravidian language family, consisting of about 80 language varieties (both languages and dialects) is today spoken by about 220 million people, mostly in southern and central India, and surrounding countries.
The Dravidian language family’s four largest languages — Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu — have literary traditions spanning centuries, of which Tamil reaches back the furthest, researchers said.
Along with Sanskrit,Tamil is one of the world’s classical languages, but unlike Sanskrit, there is continuity between its classical and modern forms documented in inscriptions, poems, and secular and religious texts and songs, they said.
“The study of the Dravidian languages is crucial for understanding prehistory in Eurasia, as they played a significant role in influencing other language groups,” said Annemarie Verkerk of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language nor its exact dispersal through time is known with certainty.
The consensus of the research community is that the Dravidians are natives of the Indian subcontinent and were present prior to the arrival of the Indo-Aryans (Indo-European speakers) in India around 3,500 years ago.
Researchers said that it is likely that the Dravidian languages were much more widespread to the west in the past than they are today.
In order to examine questions about when and where the Dravidian languages developed, they made a detailed investigation of the historical relationships of 20 Dravidian varieties.
Study author Vishnupriya Kolipakam of the Wildlife Institute of India collected contemporary first-hand data from native speakers of a diverse sample of Dravidian languages, representing all the previously reported subgroups of Dravidian.
The researchers used advanced statistical methods to infer the age and sub-grouping of the Dravidian language family at about 4,000-4,500 years old.
This estimate, while in line with suggestions from previous linguistic studies, is a more robust result because it was found consistently in the majority of the different statistical models of evolution tested in this study.
This age also matches well with inferences from archaeology, which have previously placed the diversification of Dravidian into North, Central, and South branches at exactly this age, coinciding with the beginnings of cultural developments evident in the archaeological record.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Science / by PTI / Berlin – March 21st, 2018
Retired principal translates 101 compositions of the saint-poet
The Telugu compositions of Sri Thyagaraja have reached God’s Own Country and are available to music connoisseurs in “His own language”.
This was made possible by the efforts of Latha Varma, retired Principal of Madurai-based Sri Sadguru Sangeetha Vidyalayam College of Music and Research Centre. Quite surprisingly, Tamil acted as the bridge in translating the Telugu compositions into Malayalam.
Ms. Varma, who belongs to the royal family of Ernakulam, joined the famed college in Madurai when she was 24 and retired a couple of years ago. As Malayalam is her mother tongue and she gained proficiency in Tamil with her prolonged stay in Madurai, she decided to go the extra mile to learn Telugu literature too. And she did master it with élan through a certificate and diploma course from Madurai Kamaraj University.
Though Thyagaraja kritis are sung world over by people of all languages, many are do not know Telugu and as such miss out on its literary beauty. The mellifluous note and rhythm come in for appreciation, but the ‘Bhava’ (substance) more often than not gets lost. It is this void that the musicologist wanted to fill, at least in Malayalam.
She hand-picked 101 most popular compositions of the saint-poet and gave a word-by-word translation (Prathipadartham) and also a gist (Thathparyam) of each verse. As senior Telugu professor T.S. Giriprakash Rao translated the Telugu verses into Tamil, she picked them up for translation into Malayalam.
An academician, performer cum researcher, Ms. Varma spoke to The Hindu on the sidelines of a seminar on “Group kritis of different vaggeyakaras,”organised by Sri Padmavathi Mahila Viswa Vidyalayam’s (SPMVV) Department of Music and Fine Arts, where she was the key-note speaker.
The translation work, which she calls her “pet project”, lasted for two years. “The copies are now available at the Maharaja’s College for Women and Kerala University, both in Thiruvananthapuram, and the Chittur College in Palakkad. I will soon present some [copies] to the Maharaja’s College in Ernakulam,” Ms. Varma said.
Ms. Varma was felicitated by SPMVV Rector V. Uma, Dean (Social sciences) D.B. Krishnakumari, seminar coordinator K. Saraswathi Vasudev and academic Dwaram Lakshmi on the occasion.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Andhra Pradesh / by A.D. Rangarajan / Tirupati – March 21st, 2018
Leading lady of Indian squash Joshna Chinappa and a former junior star Velavan Senthilkumr figure in the Asian Squash Federation’s list of performance awards for the year 2017.
Another Indian to get noticed is Deepak Mishra, a former player who has become a coach at the Indian Squash Academy. Deepak is to be presented with the Certificate of Recognition by the ASF.
Joshna’s best moments last year came in the Asian Individual championship which was held in April here at the Express Avenue mall where she made history by becoming the first Indian to win the coveted championship honours. For her stupendous show the Asian body chose her for the Dato Alex Lee award (outstanding performance of the year – Senior). The award for the best male player in this category went to Max Lee of Hong Kong.
Velavan had the distinction of winning the British Junior Open U-19 title for the Drysdale Cup in January in what was an historic occasion for the country with three Indians taking the first three positions. Velavan won the gold, Abhay Singh the silver and Aditya Raghavan the bronze. Velavan also featured in the title-win over Malaysia in the Asian junior team championship held in Colombo in February. For his overall show of excellence, the ASF chose him for the Hassan Musa Award ( outstanding performance of the Year- junior). The award for the female player went to Satomi Watanabe of Japan.
In all there were seven categories of awards, including for Coaches. There were 12 nominations from four countries for the Performance awards and nine nominations from six countries for the Coaches awards. The awards are to be presented at the Asian Team Championships to be held this year in Cheongju in Korea.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> Sports News> Others / by Damayanti Dasgupta / TNN / March 20th, 2018
Urmila Surana with her medal from the Mumbai Marathon | Photo Credit: The Hindu
Coimbatorean Urmila Surana on running marathons and preparing for the World Masters Athletic Meet in Spain later in the year
“I am young. At times my husband says that I am not, but I know better,” laughs 52-year- old Urmila Surana, who has participated in 25 marathons from 2015 and had a podium finish in all. “My daughters are both married and my responsibilities are over. Now is the time to explore my capabilities.”
Surana’s fitness routine is strict. “I wake up at 4.30 am, workout for an hour, finish the kitchen chores, go for swimming class, and badminton sessions. I also do yoga and have recently started cycling. I go to bed by 9.30 pm everyday. Sleeping early and taking a day off from workouts once a week is important for the body to recover.” She is also particular about her diet. “I am a vegetarian. So I eat lots of sprouts, sweet potatoes and drink orange and beetroot juice.”
Her interest in marathons began after reading an article on the Coimbatore Marathon. “I enrolled for the 10K in the veteran category. And I came first.” It took her six months to progress to 21K.
“That was also in Coimbatore and I came second.” But she doesn’t have good memories of this marathon. “I was tired and exhausted. I spoke to fellow runners and understood that I lacked strength training. So I enrolled for swimming lessons.” Playing badminton also helped her to build up her endurance.
In January, she participated in her first 42K at the Mumbai Marathon. “I could not sleep the previous night. I was worried about whether I would be able finish it. But it was smooth and I enjoyed the run. That evening I got a call saying I had got the second place for my time of four hours 30 minutes. I was surprised.”
Surana has run marathons in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Kochi. “The Hyderabad one was the most difficult. It was a 21K and we had to run over six steep bridges. This year I am going to enrol for the 42K with 16 bridges.”
She has been selected to represent India at World Masters Athletics Championships to be held in Spain in September. “The selection process was long. I had to clear the district, state and national level trials. I am now qualified to participate in 800m, 1500m, 5K and 10 K runs and the 5K walk.” She has been training since November last year. “My coach Vairavanathan gives me confidence. I am enrolling for the Kochi 42K marathon this year. If I win, I will get a chance to participate in the Boston marathon. I know I can do it.”
She believes that everyone should take some time out for themselves to stay fit. “One hour is all it takes.”
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Life & Style> Fitness / by Susan Joe Philip / March 19th, 2018
D.K. Pattammal performing for Kalaniketan in 1959. Photo: Special Arrangement
Thanks to DKP, women musicians stand out not only in classical but cine field too, where she set a new path
How often do we get to celebrate the centenary of a musician who still shines as a singular phenomenon in the world of classical music? Rarer if that musician left deep imprint on all spheres of art and life and went around with an innocent smile and feet well grounded! D. K. Pattammal’s centenary gives us an opportunity to revisit traditional values, ethics and unflinching classicism. Her 99th birthday concludes and 100th begins on March 19. A function to mark this has been arranged at Narada Gana Sabha, Chennai, tomorrow, March 17. Among others, the Vice-President of India and the Governor of Tamil Nadu are expected to participate.
As T. S. Parthasarathy said, “Pattammal’s greatness in the field is neither an accident nor a fortuitous coincidence. Prodigious effort, supported by a whole set of gifts bestowed on her by God and combined with a mighty stream of musical and artistic elements, have gone into the making of her art. Wonderfully assimilating and adapting, she pressed them into service to fashion her unique style. The results are an incomparable melodic richness, clarity and assurance that have few equals in the realm of Indian music even today.”
How can one ever imagine today, a Brahmin woman opting for a singing career a hundred years ago, defying the restrictions imposed by the community? Rukmini Devi Arundale had already cut the Gordian knot to become the first Brahmin woman to enter the Bharatanatyam field as a dancer. Still, it was with misgivings that Pattammal’s father agreed to her music being recorded by the gramophone company, when she was just thirteen. Then began the journey of tussles and challenge and today, thanks to her fortitude and forbearance, millions of woman singers and instrumentalists stand out not only in classical but cine field too, where she set a new path.
Music Academy invited her to sing when she was seventeen and she sang there uninterrupted for over 50 years and the last many years without receiving any as remuneration. Pattammal, was already a national icon by then, with record makers and film music producers, AIR and music organisations employing her versatility. Thanks to her husband R. Iswaran, who let go his well-paid Government job just to administer her career, Pattammal emerged as the first full-time professional woman musician of India. Not just being the first, but being on par, if not better than her male counterparts in all facets of music, especially in singing Ragam, Thanam and Pallavi.
Appeals to all
Her sonorous voice, uncanny musical acumen and complete dedication were well channelled, with the help of her gurus, in producing music that would satisfy the highbrow critic and provide joy to the lay rasika. There was no tentative attempt at perfection and every new exercise was an effort to better the best. Ananth Vaidhyanathan, noted voice specialist, once mentioned to this writer that only two musicians in this country had voice culturing woven into their music and hence sang with ease and firmness through their long career — Kishori Amonkar in the North and D. K. Pattammal in the South. Pattammal’s rendition of ‘Sri Jalandharam Ashrayayamyaham’ with breathless chittaswaras, a few months after she turned 79, can leave a musician of any generation gasping.
Pattammal was strongly attracted by the music of Ariyakkudi Ramanuja Iyengar. Ariyakkudi in turn regarded her as worthy counterpart among women.
Pattammal’s own style in many ways smacked of Ariyakkudi in its solidity and right mix of madhyama and vilamba kalam. Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer had no hesitation in openly proclaiming that what Ariyakkudi was to male singers, Pattammal was to women. It looks like only a handful of musicians in the last century won the acceptance of their seniors, peers and juniors, very rare for a musician however intelligent or popular. Amongst them were the invincible Tiger Varadhachariar and later D.K. Pattammal.
Now, what marked her music?
— Uncompromising adherence to tradition
— Dedication to the art, with no eye on returns or glamour.
— Judicious selection of what to offer in her concerts, with dignity and spark and
— A rare sense of depth and bhavam communicated with ease and without sentimentality.
Thinking musician
Every composition she took up was studied in its structure, analysed in its scope and finally patterned into her own style as its most defined version. That is why whatever she sang still stands as a guiding light.
Think of a young Pattammal, who with the full support of her father Krishnaswamy Dikshitar, sang patriotic songs to hundreds and thousands braving the oppressive British Raj. The songs had strong words. She didn’t fear arrest. Luckily, she escaped it! She considered singing Bharatiar’s ‘Aaduvome’ over AIR at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, as a cherished occasion in her life.
As many as 55 film hits from ‘Tyaga Bhoomi’ to ‘Hey Ram,’ several patriotic songs, a classical repertoire that ranged from Tamil hymns to Bhajans of composers including her contemporaries such as Spencer Venugopal and Thanjavur Sankar Iyer — all these make Pattammal the musician beyond compare, of modern India.
Pattammal was no liberal as we comprehend the word today. Freedom, to her, meant being obedient to lofty traditional values and obedience was not a bad word! Independence, to her, meant non-interference in upholding dignity. With this faith and belief, she singularly brought about women’s liberation without ever mentioning that word.
Honours and awards came to her unsought. Even while being a busy performer, she continued to be a successful teacher and even trained a Chinese, Chong Chiu Sen, to be a Carnatic performer. But she remained a student and a typical Indian housewife, taking care of her husband, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Her extended family included several students of all ages.
The entire 90 years of her life and music teaches us just one mantra — Simplicity.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment> Music / by N Vijay Siva / March 15th, 2018
Open source record of plants with “druggable” chemicals will help validate traditional systems
The use of Indian medicinal plants for drug discovery and therapeutics just received a boost. A database of such plants has been built by a Chennai-based team led by Areejit Samal of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
By documenting 1,742 Indian medicinal plants and 9,596 chemicals that plants use to thrive and ward off threats (phytochemicals), this database has the distinction of being the largest so far. This is a first step towards validating and developing traditional systems of medicine that use plant extracts.
For the repository, the scientists sourced information from several texts including those that documented tribal medicine. With supporting studies in the form of well-planned lab tests, this work has the potential to improve health care and enhance drug discovery.
Plants secrete various special chemicals to ward off predators, fight pathogens and survive in difficult situations. Some of these so-called phytochemicals have been used to prepare traditional medicines and also poisons. While there are extensive databases of phytochemicals of Chinese herbs, there has no similar work in India.
The new database, named IMPPAT (Indian Medicinal Plants, Phytochemistry And Therapeutics) brings together not just the Indian medicinal plants and their associated phytochemicals, but also the latter’s 2D and 3D chemical structures, the therapeutic use of the plants and the medicinal formulations.
Among the many challenges in building IMPPAT was in removing redundancy and standardising names and spellings that varied across the several books and documents they have referred to.
From previous work we know that natural products are made of highly complex molecules, which therefore are more likely to bind to very specific proteins unlike commercial (or synthesised) drug molecules.
“We show that phytochemicals in IMPPAT also have high stereochemical and shape complexity similar to natural product library of Clemons et al, and thus, IMPPAT phytochemicals are also expected to be specific protein binders,” says Areejit Samal. Drug molecules which are specific protein binders are likely to have fewer side-effects as they will bind specifically to their target protein.
Quest for druggability
The team analysed the features of the phytochemical structures using established “druggability” criteria.
This identified 960 potentially druggable phytochemicals of which only a small percentage showed similarities to existing FDA-approved drugs. “This offers immense potential for drug discovery,” says Dr Samal. Of the 960 phytochemicals, 14 have the highest druggability score, and one of these is Skullcapflavone I – This is produced by two plants, one of which is Andrographis paniculata, commonly known as Nilavembu or Siriyanangai. Another interesting topper is Kumatakenin, which is made by three plants including Artemisia capillaris. This plant is a close relative of Artemisia annuafrom which Nobel laureate Youyou Tu extracted the drug artemisinin which has saved the lives of many malaria patients.
“We hope to expand the links between phytochemicals of Indian medicinal plants and their target proteins, enabling application of systems biology… Our resource will help future efforts render Indian medicine evidence-based rather than experience-based,” says Dr Samal.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sci-Tech> Environment / by Shubashree Desikan / Chennai – March 17th, 2018
Contrary to popular opinion, brown eggs aren’t more nutritious either. | Photo Credit: M. Moorthy
Mullipatti-based Happy Hens sells the country’s first brand of free range eggs that ensure the birds are treated more humanely and minus the antibiotics
Earlier this year, a report in the The Hindu highlighted how the wrongful use of antibiotics in the poultry industry was spawning global superbugs and skewing up the food chain. But this is just one of many problems plaguing the conventional poultry industry.
The battery cage system of rearing egg-laying hens is notorious for its disregard of hygiene and the natural behaviour of the birds. “In the conventional poultry farm, seven to eight hens are squeezed into a cage that is only about as big as an A4-size sheet of paper. Birds have no space to flap their wings or even stand comfortably. Commercial farms may be labour-effective, but they are bad for the animals,” says Ashok Kannan, co-founder of Happy Hens, the company that produces and sells one of India’s first brand of free range eggs.
Their brown to off -white colour is an indicator of the eggs being free range | Photo Credit: M. Moorthy
As the label implies, free range farming is based on a more humane treatment of animals, with extra attention paid to the feed.
In the case of Happy Hens, which has its main farm in the village of Mullipatti, (around 60 kilometres from Tiruchirappalli), this means that the birds get lots of space to express their natural traits such as scratching the ground for food, walking around, laying eggs in nesting areas (fitted with earthen pots) and eating feed that is based on a unique blend of grains, cereals and herbal infusions.
“The basic components of our feed are maize, soya, rice bran and groundnut cakes, combined with a 100% herbal formulation that works on building up the immunity of the chicken rather than merely treating the disease. When the bird’s immunity increases, the risk of disease reduces,” says Kannan.
And he adds just a moment later, “It’s our 36th feed formula since we opened for business in 2012.”
Cracking the solution
Ashok Kannan, co-Founder of Happy Hens | Photo Credit: M. Moorthy
Kannan, a person with disability caused due to polio, has shifted with his wife and two children from his hometown of Madurai, to oversee the operations at the Mullipatti farm. The leased 43-acre property houses a coconut plantation and native cattle, besides the poultry project. Kannan gets around the farm on an adapted cycle-rickshaw, and receives visitors in the same vehicle. “It’s my office and home,” he jokes.
“As I have been unable to move independently since early childhood, I thought that poultry farming would be an ideal agri-business for me,” he says.
“The egg is the most wholesome food in our diet, if it is produced in the right manner. I wanted to create something that my children would enjoy. We have a greater variety of food now, but it is much lower in nutritive value than that of our forefathers.”
The very first year, Kannan lost 800 of the 1,000 chickens that he started out with. He realised that he had got their diet wrong. A chance meeting with Bengaluru-based Manjunath Marappan helped them both reset their model, and enter into collaboration.
Manjunath Marappan | Photo Credit: Sudhakara Jain
“The first two years were just about identifying the right breed and standard of production, because there was no precedent for free range eggs at that time,” says Marappan.
“Ashok was very strong on the feed aspect, while my experience was more to do with marketing the eggs. In end-2012, we started working together, making the best of our strengths in the field.”
Marappan wound up his own Bengaluru farm and slowly shifted operations to Mullipatti in 2013. At present, he says, Happy Hens produces 4,000-5,000 eggs per day, and has 20 franchisee farmers in Ariyalur, Perambalur and Tiruchirappalli. Marappan is now building a second Happy Hens farm in Hiriyur, around 160 kilometres from Bengaluru.
Manjunath Marappan | Photo Credit: Sudhakara Jain
Egg facts
Happy Hens produces eggs that are brown to off-white in colour. This is a key indicator of the egg being free range, says Ashok. Anything that is conventionally produced will be evenly white, and weigh more or less 50 grams to a piece.
And, contrary to popular opinion, brown eggs aren’t more nutritious either. “The colour of the egg shell is actually determined by the chicken’s diet. And since our birds eat anything from our special feed to worms or termites, their eggs have different colours,” clarifies Kannan.
The eggs that don’t pass the 50 gram weight test are donated to local animal shelters and orphanages by Happy Hens. Currently, the farm’s stock of birds comes from the improved native breeds Khadaknath, Gramapriya, Cauvery, and Asil Cross.
A niche product is accompanied quite naturally by a higher price tag. | Photo Credit: M. Moorthy
The birds are sourced from Government agencies as day-old chicks, and then reared for five months before they are ready to lay eggs. At any given period, Happy Hens has 3,000 chickens at the growing stage, along with its normal layer birds.
“The hen can actually live up to 15 years in its natural state,” says Kannan. “But in our poultry farming model, the fertile period of the bird gets over in 20 months.” Some 200 mature layer hens are culled per week, their meat marketed in Bengaluru.
A niche product is accompanied quite naturally by a higher price tag. Will consumers be persuaded to pay ₹25 per piece when conventional eggs are easily available for as less as ₹4 to ₹6? “Why not give the free range egg its due credit?” says Marappan.
“The low cost of the conventional egg obviously comes by cutting corners. If we want to keep the chain of people involved in our industry — the farmers, retailers and consumers — happy, we must ensure these high prices. That’s how you can survive in this competitive world,” he says.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Life & Style> Food / by Nahla Nainar / March 15th, 2018
