Latest news with #MalayalamNewYear
The Print
a day ago
- Business
- The Print
Kerala agriculture growth doubles national average, says CM Vijayan
'In the last financial year, while the agricultural sector at the national level recorded a growth of 2.1 per cent, Kerala achieved a growth of 4.65 per cent. The Agriculture Department implemented several measures aimed at increasing farmers' income by 50 per cent. He was speaking while inaugurating an online state-level celebration of Farmers' Day and the distribution of state farmer awards. Thrissur (Kerala), Aug 17 (PTI) Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Sunday that Kerala's agricultural sector is on the path of growth and that the state has achieved more than double the national average growth. 'A short-term agricultural programme named Mission 2026 and a long-term plan called Mission 2033 have been highly supportive in this effort,' the chief minister said on the occasion of the Malayalam New Year, Chingam 1. The state has also been able to implement a comprehensive crop insurance scheme, Vijayan said. He noted that during this government's tenure, paddy productivity had increased to 3,108 kg per hectare, while coconut cultivation achieved 54 per cent growth through the Keragramam project. The procurement of coconuts rose from 6.28 lakh tonne to 17.20 lakh tonne, the CM added. Vijayan said climate change, market uncertainties and wild animal attacks were adversely affecting the agricultural sector. 'To counter climate change and bring changes in value-added production, the state is implementing the KERA Project with World Bank support at a cost of Rs 2,365 crore. The project will directly benefit four lakh farmers and indirectly benefit another 10 lakh farmers,' he said. The chief minister added that this was the first major World Bank-supported project for the agricultural sector in 40 years. Vijayan said the agricultural calendar should be adjusted in line with climate change, and the sector should move forward through constructive discussions and innovative farming practices. The government, he said, was looking into combining modern technologies as well. 'More than 150 agritech start-ups have been launched. The government is also making efforts to carry out effective interventions in the value-added products sector. Moving ahead with the goal of branding agricultural value-added products under the motto 'One Krishi Bhavan, One Value-Added Product', over 200 value-added products have been prepared for marketing,' he said. The chief minister said curbing the menace of wild animals was indeed essential. 'However, this cannot be fully achieved through the intervention of the state government alone. Timely amendments to central laws are required, and for this the state government is putting pressure on the Centre,' he said. In addition, special projects that can be implemented at the state level have also been designed. The CM said the government's aim was to combine traditional farming practices with modern agriculture techinques and put them into practice. State Agriculture Minister P Prasad presided over the function. PTI TGB TGB KH This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
News18
2 days ago
- Business
- News18
Kerala agriculture growth doubles national average, says CM Vijayan
Thrissur (Kerala), Aug 17 (PTI) Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Sunday that Kerala's agricultural sector is on the path of growth and that the state has achieved more than double the national average growth. He was speaking while inaugurating an online state-level celebration of Farmers' Day and the distribution of state farmer awards. 'In the last financial year, while the agricultural sector at the national level recorded a growth of 2.1 per cent, Kerala achieved a growth of 4.65 per cent. The Agriculture Department implemented several measures aimed at increasing farmers' income by 50 per cent. 'A short-term agricultural programme named Mission 2026 and a long-term plan called Mission 2033 have been highly supportive in this effort," the chief minister said on the occasion of the Malayalam New Year, Chingam 1. The state has also been able to implement a comprehensive crop insurance scheme, Vijayan said. He noted that during this government's tenure, paddy productivity had increased to 3,108 kg per hectare, while coconut cultivation achieved 54 per cent growth through the Keragramam project. The procurement of coconuts rose from 6.28 lakh tonne to 17.20 lakh tonne, the CM added. 'To counter climate change and bring changes in value-added production, the state is implementing the KERA Project with World Bank support at a cost of Rs 2,365 crore. The project will directly benefit four lakh farmers and indirectly benefit another 10 lakh farmers," he said. The chief minister added that this was the first major World Bank-supported project for the agricultural sector in 40 years. Vijayan said the agricultural calendar should be adjusted in line with climate change, and the sector should move forward through constructive discussions and innovative farming practices. The government, he said, was looking into combining modern technologies as well. 'More than 150 agritech start-ups have been launched. The government is also making efforts to carry out effective interventions in the value-added products sector. Moving ahead with the goal of branding agricultural value-added products under the motto 'One Krishi Bhavan, One Value-Added Product', over 200 value-added products have been prepared for marketing," he said. The chief minister said curbing the menace of wild animals was indeed essential. 'However, this cannot be fully achieved through the intervention of the state government alone. Timely amendments to central laws are required, and for this the state government is putting pressure on the Centre," he said. In addition, special projects that can be implemented at the state level have also been designed. The CM said the government's aim was to combine traditional farming practices with modern agriculture techinques and put them into practice. State Agriculture Minister P Prasad presided over the function. PTI TGB TGB KH view comments First Published: August 17, 2025, 22:00 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
News18
2 days ago
- Climate
- News18
Kerala celebrates Malayali New Year, marking the start of Chingam
Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) [India], August 17 (ANI): Kerala welcomed the Malayalam New Year on Saturday, flocking to temples to offer prayers and celebrating the beginning of Chingam, the first month of the Malayalam calendar. Chingam, known as Kollam Varsham, is also being observed as Farmers Day, honouring the community's deep-rooted bond with soil and agriculture. This year, the Chingam festival is celebrated just 6 days before the commencement of Onam, which will be held from August 26 to September 5. Chingam, the dawn of the Malayalam New Year. For every Malayali, it is a day of new beginnings and fresh hopes for the people. Traditionally known as Ponnin Chingam (Golden Chingam), this season has faced two years of heavy Onam rains, yet people now look forward with optimism, believing this Onam will truly be a golden one. After enduring the hardships of Karkidakam, Malayalis eagerly await this day, stepping into the auspicious month. It is a time of harvest, when farmers reap the fruits of their care during the testing rainy from Shri Padmanabhaswamy Temple and Pazhavangaadi Ganapathy Temple showed devotees flocking to the temples to offer their prayers, coming with family and relatives for their morning a local who visits the temple every year with family to mark the festival, told ANI, 'We come every year on this day. We start the day by visiting temple. I wish everyone a happy new year and a good life head"Shika, a kid who visited the temple, mentioned how the crowd swells every year at the temple during the festival month, with Onam fast approaching too. 'Chingam is auspicious day for every Malayali, as our festival season in nearing like Onam, I am blessed with Lord Ganesha. We wear traditional dress. We get so many visitors from outside country also," Shika told ANI. Malayalis welcome Chingam, the first month of the Malayalam New Year, with hope and devotion. As the state prepares for Onam celebrations, temples witnessed a heavy rush of devotees. (ANI)
The Hindu
16-07-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Books without Borders
Published : Jul 16, 2025 19:45 IST - 6 MINS READ Dear reader, Mayyil in Kerala's Kannur district is my favourite place for many reasons—and if you're expecting beaches or backwaters, you will be gently disappointed. It's my favourite because this tiny local panchayat has 35 public libraries. It's startling to see a community with around 20 schools and 20 temples have almost double the number of libraries: which is either a testament to Kerala's commitment to literacy or proof that the people have collectively decided that books are more reliable than Gods when it comes to life advice. My first visit in 2019 felt like coming home to a memory I hadn't known I had—a biblio-sojourn in the truest sense, where on every bend of the dusty road there stood a library, not a café, not a mall, not another temple. I wondered how many communities could claim such a density of literary sanctuary, then discovered that Kerala—with about 8,500 public libraries—is second only to Maharashtra in raw numbers, but leads the nation at approximately 23.4 libraries per 1,00,000 people. The unseen hand behind this proliferation is the Kerala State Library Council, which has apparently been more successful at empire-building than most actual empires. I visited Mayyil's Velam Vayanashala (library in Malayalam) a few years later. The library had invited me to speak on an oddly beautiful occasion. Pusthaka-kani, as they called it, is modelled on the traditional Vishukani (an arrangement of auspicious items such as an idol of Krishna, a mirror, golden shower flowers, cucumber, and viewed at dawn on Vishu, the Malayalam New Year, to ensure prosperity.) But in this library, the kani (or view) was that of books, neatly arranged. That's how they welcomed the New Year. Standing that morning in the gentle hush that only libraries can create, I told them of a book I had just read: Susan Orlean's 2018 work The Library Book, which is about the devastating fire that gutted the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986. 'I grew up in libraries, or at least it feels that way…The library might have been the first place I was ever given autonomy,' writes Susan Orlean in the book, which is an elegy doubling as an ode to belonging—the kind of belonging that asks for no passport, no ideology, only the willingness to get lost in another's words. And that sense of belonging is something that, as Velam's library members showed me, goes beyond religion, caste, or class. I don't know if any institution has such powers in our world. Libraries act like wayward trains, delivering travellers to destinations they didn't know they were seeking. The sheer feeling of serendipity is thrilling. In those small village libraries, whether it was the Kuzhikkattussery Grameena Vayanasala or the Aloor Grama Panchayat Library, the two libraries that powered my childhood, I had discovered in them, by accident or divine intervention, books I never imagined existed. I'd come expecting comfort; I found astonishment. The kind that makes you believe in benevolent universe conspiracies—the way a random book falls off a shelf just when you need its particular brand of wisdom, or how you stumble upon exactly the right metaphor for your existential crisis hiding between cookbooks and poetry collections. In those early pages of our library addiction, didn't we all feel we had unearthed old therapy salons? Places where readers arrived seeking only knowledge or a pastime, but found something more therapeutic than actual therapy and at a cheaper rate. We like-minded souls drunk on words and stories sat close, mostly silent, connected by grief or laughter at the trials of Raskolnikov (who really needed better life coaches), Tess (who deserved better than Hardy's relentless doom), Quentin Compson (whose stream-of-consciousness was more coherent than most Reddit feeds), Meursault (the original emotionally unavailable protagonist), and Okonkwo (whose story hits differently when you're navigating your own cultural dislocations). There were times when a turning page carried the weight of collective tears, and we would emerge, replenished, ready to meet the mundane again with something approaching grace. We didn't need a psychologist—just a shelf, a chair, and that unspoken fellowship of readers who understood that sometimes the best conversations happen in complete silence. Eric Klinenberg wrote in Palaces for the People that libraries are a social infrastructure, the connective tissue of resilient democracies. In their soft light, strangers become neighbours not through forced small talk but through the gentle recognition that we are all just trying to figure out the business of being human. Immigrants find voices; the unemployed find career choices; senior citizens grasp at companionship; teenagers meet alter egos who mirror their confusion, and realise they're not uniquely broken. The history of libraries is a saga that stretches from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to dusty scrolls in Alexandria (history's greatest literary tragedy), from fluorescent-lit reading rooms in 20th-century Carnegie libraries to today's digital archives. Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen chronicle this in The Library: A Fragile History, asking us to see libraries not as static institutions but living organisms: moulded by power, censorship, and the changing media of their times. Libraries today teeter under pressures we once thought unimaginable. Across the globe, funding for public libraries is waning. In the US, a Trump administration order to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services—responsible for about $300 million in grants for libraries and museums. In India, Maharashtra alone has seen at least 1,000 public libraries shut down in the past three years. Community libraries need a continuous feed of resources, community trust, and institutional goodwill. If the funding fails, the aisles will go dark, the story hours will cease, the teenagers will drift elsewhere, and those shared moments will vanish like clouds, leaving behind only the hollow echo of what democracy sounds like when it's dying. But a current of human determination and gentle rebellion makes you believe that some people will always refuse to let good things die. This example, too, comes from Trump's America. In New York City, when Mayor Eric Adams proposed a $58 million budget cut to the public library in 2024, authors, celebrities, neighbours, and strangers organised campaigns that restored many services. Similar to what civil society participation and the Library Council's support still do for the many libraries in Mayyil. If ever you find yourself there—or in any other town or village you visit—pay attention to the hush. Follow it like a curious cat. Turn the corner. There, under a low canopy of books, you may discover what I found: home. And with it, an entire world waiting for you, page by page, question by question, revelation by revelation, in the most democratic spaces that humanity has ever created. I was reminded of Mayyil and those many other libraries I have visited when I read this lovely photo essay by Nabeel Ahmad about how three community libraries are making a difference in Delhi, a city where I worked for nearly a decade but missed the libraries of my Kerala childhood. Delhi's libraries were all elite, access dictated by privilege and metal detectors, and I hated them, yearning for the little open spaces of the community library. Which is why I felt so happy and at home when I saw this photo essay. Do read the piece, and if you are in Delhi, pay a visit. If you are not in Delhi, check out your local libraries and tell us about them. Wishing you a lovely week ahead, Jinoy Jose P. Digital Editor, Frontline We hope you've been enjoying our newsletters featuring a selection of articles that we believe will be of interest to a cross-section of our readers. Tell us if you like what you read. And also, what you don't like! Mail us at frontline@
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Monthly Horoscope for April 2025: Love Is Set to Blossom for Some!
Greetings, astrology lovers! Are you eager to know what the cosmos has in store for your future? Prepare yourself for a thrilling ride as we bring you insightful monthly astrology predictions for April 2025. April 2025 is set to bring numerous auspicious occasions worth celebrating! Explore your April monthly horoscope to align with the energy of these spiritual events and seize the opportunities this vibrant month has to offer. This will help you experience this exhilarating month to the fullest. Rama Navami- 6th April 2025 (Sunday) Mahavir Jayanti- 10th April 2025 (Thursday) Hanuman Jayanti- 12th April 2025 (Saturday) Malayalam New Year or Vishu Kani- 14th April 2025 (Monday) Vaishakhi- 14th April 2025 (Monday) Pohela Boishakh- 15th April 2025 (Tuesday) Akshaya Tritiya- 30th April 2025 (Wednesday) As per the April 2025 horoscope, this month is set to be a game-changer, with powerful planetary transits shaping your destiny. The bold and fiery Mars will step into Cancer on 3rd April 2025 (Thursday). Under this placement, people may struggle to express anger openly, leading to frustration or emotional outbursts. Soon after, the mighty Sun will transit into the Aries sign on 14th April 2025 (Monday). With this transit, there will be an increase in leadership abilities and a natural inclination to take charge in personal and professional matters. Mercury will be placed in Pisces for this whole month. Under this placement, people may have abstract, creative, or symbolic thoughts rather than focus on facts and details. The monthly horoscope 2025 indicates that April, the fourth month of the year, will bless the natives with fun conversations, enthusiasm, new opportunities, good analytical skills, career growth, and stability in every domain of your life. The monthly horoscope for April 2025 denotes that the overall energy will be positive and loving. It will bring many favorable changes in people's lives. Let's see how April will affect the 12 zodiac signs. Dear Aries natives, April 2025 promises you an attractive aura, good health, and heightened confidence. At the beginning of the month, you might take the lead in your personal and professional matters, exuding charisma and determination. Your presence will command attention, making this an excellent time to push forward with personal projects, make bold decisions, and focus on individuality. Physically, you may experience heightened vitality, though the tendency to overexert yourself will exist. The April horoscope indicates that you may also need independence more. This will push you to break free from restrictions. Read more Aries monthly predictionAt the beginning of the month, your sleep cycle might suffer for some time, but things will get better with time. The zodiac month prediction indicates that you might feel less confident and have drained energy during this time. You will need some time in solitude for the introspection of your thoughts and some major life decisions. At the workplace, it will be a good month for collaborations with like-minded people. You also have to be aware of your hidden enemies, who can try to sabotage your work. Read more Taurus monthly predictionAt the beginning of the month, you might have an excellent time to expand your social circle, collaborate on visionary projects, or take bold steps toward your long-term goals. As per the astrology monthly horoscope, you might become more active in your social group and try to achieve a certain position. You will be vibrant and lively, motivating you more and giving you the energy to work smarter. Read more Gemini monthly prediction Read also:👉 | | Dear Cancerians, April 2025 promises strong determination, great work ethics, an ambitious nature, and a joyous home environment. At the beginning of the month, you will focus on your work and career goals more passionately. According to the monthly horoscope for April 2025, you will be highly driven, goal-oriented, and eager to establish yourself as a leader in your field, and your professional presence will become stronger. Some Cancer natives might have a heated discussion at home due to their sudden stubbornness or short temperament, but the overall environment at home will be peaceful. Read more Cancer monthly prediction Dear Leos, April 2025 will impact higher education. It will bring heightened interest in spirituality and mentorship. At the commencement of this month, you might feel an inner push to seek new experiences and broaden your perspective. Your interest in spirituality will increase due to someone's influence online. This month, the students considering enrolling in a course, pursuing advanced studies, or taking up a new intellectual challenge will get an additional push to move forward. Read more Leo monthly predictionAt the beginning of this month, your energy might urge you to confront hidden fears, take control of financial matters, and embrace your personal reinventions. While this month can bring emotional challenges, it also presents an opportunity for significant personal transformation. The monthly astrology prediction indicates that the Virgo natives involved in legal matters or inheritance issues might expect some activity. Read more Virgo monthly predictionAt the beginning of April, unknowingly, you might dominate or manipulate people around you. While this will be a great time to assert your individuality, cooperation will be necessary to maintain harmony in relationships. Finding a balance between autonomy and commitment will be essential. At the workplace, the natives might be able to solve some complex issues that are becoming a hurdle in their ongoing projects. The April month prediction indicates that the natives involved in businesses are advised to manage their expenses properly. Read more Libra monthly prediction Do you have more queries about what April will be like for you? Or do you want astrological guidance in life? If so, get in touch with the astrologers at the beginning of the month, you might have a surge of energy, making you more determined to improve productivity, take on new challenges at work, and refine your daily routine. You might focus on building long-term health habits rather than burning out quickly. You will have more self-discipline, which will help you in your personal and professional life. Read more Scorpio monthly prediction Read More:👉 At the beginning of the month, the natives who want to pick up a new hobby or start any sport are in luck. This month's energy might urge them to push their limits and take out some time. However, it is necessary to pace yourself to prevent burnout and exhaustion. The natives might also have a high creative energy, vibrant body language, and attitude during this time. Read Sagittarius monthly predictionAt the start of April, Capricorn natives considering moving, renovating, or making changes to their homes may feel urged to take action. However, make sure these decisions are well thought out rather than driven by momentary frustration or impatience. They might feel emotionally secure at home but have minor disagreements with their mother or any motherly figure in the family. Read more Capricorn monthly predictionAt the commencement of the month, your communication skills might become sharper, and you will feel an increased urge to express your thoughts confidently. According to the April monthly horoscope, this will be a great time to initiate conversations, pitch ideas, and take the lead in intellectual and social settings. Practicing active listening and allowing room for dialogue will make your interactions more effective. Read more Aquarius monthly prediction Dear Pisceans, April 2025 will focus more on your finances and conjugal life. This month can also be about impulsive spending. At the beginning of the month, you might feel a push to focus your energy on finances and investments. There may be a stronger focus on exploring passive or alternative income sources to enhance financial stability. Your personal values might also influence this month. There might be a transformation in your approach and perspective when it comes to your personal and professional life. Read more Pisces monthly prediction Article Source: #Astrology
