T.Kallupatti

The town has an initial similar to that of a person, something which is, in fact, a common feature of towns in Southern Tamil Nadu. The initial for Kallupatti comes from the name of the mother village from which it derives its existence. The form is similar to that between a mother and her children, a convention which was a feature of the original Tamil culture for years. T.Kallupatti's mother village is Devankuruchi (spelled as Thevankurichi), a small village on the road towards Peraiyur. The Devankurichi hill is a symbol of spirituality, one which is visible while driving near to T.Kallupatti. Many people throng to the Agneeswaran Temple of Devankurichi in order to perform the last rites of those who are dead and so it is equated to Kasi.[6]

T.Kallupatti is a symbol of mixed culture.

All communities contribute equally to the total population of the town and the people of Kallupatti live in harmony, which is not the case in other villages of south Tamil Nadu, where caste-related violence is common.

The Brahmin population has been eroded, though they were once dominant in the community.

The Christian population in the town has increased recently to a significant number. Dalits of the area are well educated and settled except for a small group.

Notable locations within this historical place include Eazhoor (seven villages); the Muthalamman Temple; the Devankurichi Temple; the Gandhi Niketan Ashram; the Rural Extension Training Centre (RETC) and the District Institutions of Education and Training (called the teacher-training school),[7] along with government hospitals, etc.

Before Indian independence, T.Kallupatti acted as a hub for meetings and discussions among freedom fighters. The town was visited by many national freedom fighters and political leaders.

The Madurai District has an endless list of towns with special religious practices and T.Kallupatti is not far behind in this regard. Among the nearby temples are:

• The Agneeswaran(SHIVA LINGA) Umadevi (PARVATHI) hill temple at Easwaraberi Thevanturichi.
• The Muthalamman (Women Goddess) Temple Festival: a famous Temple Festival celebrated once in two years between seven villages around T.Kallupatti.[8] It is one of the rare festivals which does nor have any caste issues and for which everyone comes together to help the celebrations. This is a major shift from the caste-related violence during the Temple festivals in Tamil Nadu and the Southern districts in particular. The festival involves each of the seven villages preparing their own Sapparam for their goddess. Vannivelampatti comes close to competing with T.Kallupatti Sapparam in terms of importance. The festival comes a few days before or after Deepavali.
• The Mariamman Temple Festival is a yearly festival involving Tamil traditions. Women take Mulaipari during the festival.[9][10]
• The Solapatti Karuppaswamy Temple: Telugu and Tamil communities make offerings on a regular basis to the Karuppaswamy temple.
• Ugadi (The Telugu New year) is also celebrated with the same fanfare as with other Tamil festivals and Telugu communities have local deities which they share with Tamil communities.

Karaikeni is a small village where the Padukalam is celebrated by many villages coming together to have different war-like activities. The history of this practice goes back over five hundred years to when the Karaikeni ruler Arasuthevar decided to resolve a dispute between two other small rulers. His decision was that there should be a military contest to decide the winner. One of the rulers and his army was destroyed but one warrior escaped. His descendants come together every two years to celebrate this festival. Now the festival involves a fight between groups dressed in typical, traditional Tamil garb, which includes the Silambu.[11][12]

• Tamil
• Telugu

Gandhi Niketan Ashram, which has a long history and rich tradition behind it, is the brain-child of Freedom fighter G. Venkatachalapathy ("The Architect of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Movement in Tamil Nadu") and was started in 1940 to help create an independent India and reconstruct the type of rural India envisioned by Mohandas K. Gandhi.

After India attained independence in 1947, the Gandhi Niketan Ashram was involved in areas like community development, panchayati raj, and khadi and village industries. Development officials and activists from all over India were trained here to work at a grassroots level. The Ashram also played a key role in the Bhoodan movement spearheaded by Acharya Vinoba Bhave.

Martin Luther King Jr., the American Nobel Peace Prize laureate and civil rights movement leader, visited the founder of the Madras twice and obtained a first-hand account of the experiences of Venkatachalapathy in organizing Satyagraha and constructive programmes. E. F. Schumacher, one of the founders of the Green Movement in the west and renowned author of the book Small is Beautiful visited the Ashram in 1962 and obtained valuable insights into the areas of appropriate technology for the benefit of the rural poor. Schumacher was later seen as an adviser for the Indian planning commission in the early 1970s.

• To implement the Gandhian vision of Gram Swaraj by promoting constructive training, demonstration and development programmes.
• To enable the villagers to produce their own clothing by spinning and weaving with hand-spun yarn.
• To promote an appropriate educational system suited to rural realities based on the Gandhian concept of Basic Education.
• To eradicate the evil of untouchability and to propagate Adult Literacy.
• To train rural people to keep their villages clean.
• To improve agricultural practices and to teach villagers to produce nutritive food grains.
• To educate people on the dangers of alcoholism and wean them away from liquor.
• To achieve all of the above in order to create a village reconstruction army.

An ambitious programme to introduce computer-aided learning and interactive curriculum support in 1,000 rural schools in the country was launched here in 2008. The e-learning/digital content programme was launched by former President A P J Abdul Kalam at the Gandhi Niketan Ashram School. The initiative helps students clarify their doubts while sitting in their class. Schools are given the infrastructure required for IT-based education which includes animation and interactive tools for various projects at the high/higher secondary school level. [13]

[14]

At T. Kallupatti, 35 street lights, seven sodium vapour lamps at a bus stand, and a motor pumpset of 7.5 horsepower used for an overhead tank are powered by a biomass gasifier unit. The unit of 12 KVA (kilovolt ampere) generates 220 units a day at a mere Rs.500. The bus stand and a nearby park are lit up round the clock, even in times of load shedding.

The unit is fuelled completely by Julia Flora, a plant known as Seemakaruvellai (Thorny tree). A feasibility study for the project showed that the plant was available in abundance in the locality. This was critical to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project. Self-help groups supply the wood, which is dried in the sun for 10 days and then chopped into pieces. The progress of the unit is closely monitored. The advantages of biomass power generation method include:

• Reduction in the emission of carbon and in soil erosion.
• Provision of a means of restoring degraded land.
• Reuse of residues from the raw materials of wood, bagasse, rice husk and other agricultural materials. These can be used to generate heat and electricity for agricultural and industrial processes.
• Short-rotation of wood species, including casuarina, which is used to fuel the biomass units.

By harvesting crop in rotation, a standing plantation of 250 hectares will grow 10,000 tonnes of casuarina, which is sufficient to generate 1 megawatt. A 2,500-hectare casuarina energy plantation could support a plant of 10-12 MW.

[15]

T.Kallupatti police stations are present in mother villages and in hamlets under each mother village. There are 15 mother villages. [16]

T.Kallupatti has a substation of TNEB which supplies electricity to the town and nearby villages. The capacity of this plant was upgraded in 2010.[17]

The town is well connected by National Highway 208 (India) as far as Thirumangalam where it joins with National Highway 7 (India) to Madurai in the North. The NH208 runs via Rajapalayam until it reaches Kollam(Kerala) in the south. All buses to Rajapalayam and Tenkasi run through the town and it is the route for Srivilliputhur, Courtallam, Ayyappa Temple in Pamba and southern Kerala Towns including Trivandrum via Shencottah.[5]

The nearest Railway Stations are kalligudi (13.64 km&8.48 mile) Thirumangalam (18 km) and Virudhunagar (27 km)

The Dr. J.C. Kumarappa Institute of Rural Technology and Development at T. Kallupatti (an institutional training centre of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC)), provided training in a variety of skills. It offer: six-months training in footwear and leather goods manufacturing; five-months training in tailoring and embroidery; four-months training in the servicing of electronics and electrical appliances; three-months training in welding and fabrication, fancy leather and resin-goods making, motor winding, cutting and tailoring; two-months training in exercise book manufacturing, toilet and laundry soap making, handmade paper conversion (notebooks, file, cover, carry bag, etc.) and fruit and vegetable processing; one-month training in spices and masala making, detergent cake making; two-week training in screen printing; week-long training in cleaning powder making, detergent powder, fruit jam, squash and pickle-making, and four-day training in bio manure and vermin-compost. From 2011, this institute was closed by the administration of the Gandhi nekaten ashram.[19]

T.Kallupatti is at the centre of the Madurai-Rajapalayam belt of textile industries. These textile mills arose because of the extremely rich black soil deposits in and around Kallupatti, which favours cotton cultivation in large volumes. Textile industries (weaving mills, spinning mills, dyeing units), handlooms, handicrafts and factories have grown around T.Kallupatti, leading to a large number of jobs for men and women. This is due to the cheap labour around the town. Textile mills from Rajapalayam have opened their units in the vicinity. The subsequent availability of jobs for women accounts for more than 40% jobs for women, with the Chennai-based ROPE company providing training and job opportunities for women.

Major employers include:

• Vee Bee Textile Mills
• Small-Scale Industrial units in Gandhi Niketan, including leather factories.
• Khadi Units.
• M/s. Rope Enterprises (p) Ltd.
• M/s. Rope Artisans and crafts foundation.

[13]

• Indian Overseas Bank: the T.Kallupatti branch covers most of the customers and nearby villages.
• State Bank of India: a T.Kallupatti branch
• Canara Bank: a T.Kallupatti branch

[20]

• 15 Primary Agricultural Co-operative Banks.
• 2 Scheduled Banks
• 5 Nationalised Banks

[14]

The Khadi and Village Industries Commission has a rural industrial service centre here. There are only three centres like this. The other two centres are in Chennai and Madurai. The cells guide budding entrepreneurs to set up industries in rural areas. This free service gives a boost to the rural employment-generation programme of the KVIC .[21]

Kallupatti has a high literacy rate. There are a number of villages surrounding Kallupatti and every village has a government primary school or high school or higher-secondary school. Most of the teachers working in these villages are resident at Kallupatti. Kallupatti is well connected to all these villages by good roads. The government provides a regular bus service from Kallupatti for the schools, so it is easy for the teaching population to go to the village schools in the morning and reach home in the evening.

• Gandhi Niketan Higher Secondary School. Students wear the traditional Khadi dress and the institution educates almost 80% of the students in the union and villages. The school is part of the ECO CLUB and is evaluated as part of the National Green Corps.[21]
• GOVT. Higher Secondary School.
• M.S.R. Matriculation Higher Secondary School, run by Dr.R.Muthukrishnan.
• Lord Venkateshwara Matriculation Higher Secondary School

[22]

• Jaya Nursery English School, started in 1990

[23] [24]

• DIET" Government Teacher Training College
• MSR Teacher Training Centre
• Sri Nagalakshmi Ammal College of sciences

T.Kallupatti comes under the Usilampatti Educational District.[25]

A prominent leader from this region is R. Muthiah. From 1991 to 1996, R. Muthiah was the Former Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker while part of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). He was also the Union Minister for Surface Transport in the NDA Government led by A.B. Vajpayee. He later joined Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).[27]

Mr. Muthiah was elected for Sedappatti as a Member of Legislative Assembly for five terms. He was instrumental in the development of a large number of villages and brought efficient rural administration by forming the Peraiyur Taluk and T.Kallupatti Union. Many village roads connecting to T.Kallupatti were developed. Government schools were started in many villages and health care was provided to almost all villages.[28]