'Resilient Proto Village' concept places Tekodu on world map

Proto village(Sathya Sai): Kalyan Akkipeddi, a techie turned campaigner for 'Resilient Villages' in India and overseas, founded the Resilient Proto Village concept based on Gandhian philosophy. As one lands in 'Proto Village' near Tekodu in Sathya Sai district, people on the road to Tekodu volunteer to guide one to the proto village assuming that guests to the district are bound to the infamous village where pre-medieval lifestyle and philosophy is pursued. The village of course has the cordless wi-fi to which everyone has access to. Eleven children live in the village having its own school with least textbooks. Their school curriculum is affiliated to National Institute of Open School in Delhi. The school teaches how to live life and get acquainted with things that you can make out a living with including agriculture tools and life engineering. Nothing bores the students as irrelevant academics have no place here.

Vivek, an architecture engineer hailing from Visakhapatnam, who tried his hands with modern architecture concepts ended up with lack of fulfillment in his career. His aim was to contribute to society by way of nature-friendly technologies. His quest for age old architectural concepts that necessitates just working with hands and least technological interventions and mud concrete architecture etc finally landed him in the proto village where he is engaged in exploring cost-effective nature friendly technologies to build houses and dwellings for Resilient villages.

About 23 people live in the village hailing from different backgrounds, in a quest to return to the roots of human civilisation where one works mostly with his hands, are pursuing healthy lifestyles and restoring virginity of soils.

Henrike, a proto village member, says that their morning starts at 6.30 am with a meeting that will decides the chores of day sipping tea together.

The pots keep boiling in the community kitchen where everything is prepared for the village residents from tea to breakfast to lunch, tea and snacks to dinner. After eating supper at 6.30 pm, the village calls it a day and eventually the village slips into slumber after their supper. Early to bed and early to rise is the ageold dictum followed by the residents who had all come here in a quest to move closer to nature and listen to its promptings.

The village observes its weekly off on Wednesday and their first day of the week starts on Thursday.

Everyone does their job to keep the village going. No one lives for himself but all for everyone. The role of money is the least. No salaried jobs and each one is paid a small amount of stipend just to meet personal expenditure.

Fruits, pulses, peanuts, vegetables, millets and small amount of paddy and other food grains are cultivated. Presently the village has not reached sufficiency in revenue. They are being supported by agencies that believe in the promotion of Resilient Proto villages.

Every evening a meeting from 5 pm to 5.30 pm reviews the works undertaken and plans for works that should be done next week. Kalyan Akkipeddi of Jindupur town quit his lucrative job in General Electric in a quest to transform the face of villages into resilient ones by striking friendship with nature. He purchased a piece of land measuring nearly 13 acres in 2014 in Tekodu village which is on the fringe of reserve forest in Sathya Sai district. In 4 years, he transformed the piece of land into a fertile and prosperous one by digging farm ponds and rain harvesting structures. Vivek helped in designing mud blocks in place of bricks which proved to be stronger than bricks.

"Developed a farming model that is not only eco-friendly, but can also potentially generate a revenue of INR 36,000 per month from an acre of land. We plan to create a network of 1,000 farmers trained in this model over the next three years," added Kalyan. Healthy food practices that we are adopting in our village prevent residents from becoming a casualty to sicknesses and diseases, is our mission, asserts Kalyan.