Team Herald
MARGAO: Businessman Chirag Datta Naik announced a donation of Rs 1 Crore to Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM) during a press conference held in Margao on Friday. The donation commemorates the 70th birthday of his father, Datta Damodar Naik, on December 30.
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KBM will utilise the interest accrued from the corpus to organise a Chitrangi Melava and Samajik Parishad on progressive themes every alternate year. The organisation will also conduct annual full-day workshops focusing on past and present Konkani writers’ literature.
The initiative includes a dedicated budget for documenting experiences of underprivileged individuals who are unable to express their stories in writing, with plans to publish these accounts as books.
Naik proposed that KBM introduce Konkani examinations benchmarked against the Hindi examinations conducted by Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Vardha, and the Sanskrit and Mathematics examinations by Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune. The examination system will comprise five tiers: Balbodhini, Pravesh, Prabodh, Praveen, and Pandit.
The businessman also announced plans to allocate funds for producing 6 to 8 telefilms based on the best stories by Konkani writers.
Furthermore, Naik revealed plans to establish the Fountainhead Charitable Trust with a corpus of Rs 5 crore to be accumulated over the next few years. The trust will provide scholarships to needy students from the interest earned Prof Bhaskar Nayak will chair the trust, with Dr Susheela Sawant Mendes, Vijay Hede, and Prashant Naik serving as members.
