Meetings with the Local and District Govt. Officials

Dated Nov 16, 2015

A few weeks ago we had sent the following message (formally from OSA) to the Ganjam district magistrate regarding our latest negotiations with the officials on the public library development.

Background: During my visit to Ganjam in Oct. 2015, I had met with the Ganjam district magistrate and the brhamapur Municipality Commissioner to explain, argue and motivate on our vision and mission. I also visited 3 different libraries where we either want to repair/rebuild or create a Model Urban Library. (You would have earlier heard of our efforts through the Library Committee — to recover the funds donated out to the CM’s relief fund after Phailin and utilize it towards a modern and model public library vision/concept in the affected areas.)

I have attached a few pictures from that trip: 1) The current state of the MKCG Library that we are trying to revive and rebuild as a “model urban library”, (2) The sorry state of the Sarathi Library that continues to be terrible since the Phailin struck it 2 years ago, (3) Meeting the Ganjam Collector (Mr. Prem Chaudhury), (4) Meeting the Municipality Commissioner (Mr. Manoj Mohanty) in his office.

I also Visited the Berhampur Municipality Library and had an hour long discussion with the citizens using the library as a “reading room for magazines and newspapers”. But I have to dig up the picture.

As I have said before, our net accomplishment has been slow and intense but we are “in a marathon, not a sprint”.(It may seem miraculous at times due to hard-fought gains on the ground, starting with convincing the CM’s office to return the money down to district and to municipality, etc., and convincing an array of officials and locals to cooperate a bit)

To make sure the Brahmapur public knows about our donations/efforts/vision when the BMC formally meets next to consider and implement our recommendations, we asked our volunteer friends in Brahmapur to get the attention of the press. Today, while searching for possible news publication, I ran into an article derived from our effort: Times-of-India-Brahmapur-news . (The person named Surjya Padhi in the article is one of the local volunteer friends whom we have been motivating with our vision/action and who, in return, is helping us with some needed local actions.)

Thanks

Darshan

For the Public Library Initiative/Committee

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Meetings with the Ganjam District Magistrate and later with Berhampur Municipality Commissioner and Executive Engineer: