1960 Alumni - Golden Jubilee Celebrations - 2009

November 14 - Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday attracted all of us to kick off our 50th year graduation to finish the Golden Jubilee next year in April after full 50 years of our examinations. Our generation (70+ years) came from independence days and Pundit Nehru's modern temple building activity then has laid the foundation for the modern India. We were a deeply involved party to this nation building of steel plants, dams, atomic energy and space era and building of higher educational institutions. Our college is now Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University. We gathered on 13th evening for dinner at Ishwarya Grand near Bhanugudi, a land mark in our days.

Godavari basin went through an agricultural revolution with Sir Arthur Cotton building the Anicut in Dowleshwaram; this has transformed Godavari and Krishna districts to Rice bowls of India. Now we have another revolution from Godavari basin gas fields in bringing gas based power stations, we guess this coastal Andhra will soon be one of the richest parts of India adding to the literature and culture from the hub of Rajahmundry. We thought of starting of the celebrations with a visit to these new temples of Andhra Pradesh.

We approached Mr. Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao, CMD of GMR group who had the vision of establishing a gas based plant in Vemagiri, few Kilo Meters away from Arthur Cotton's Anicut and a Barge Mounted Gas Turbine Plant in Kakinada and Mr. B V Nageswara Rao, MD of GMR Energy Limited. The response was immense and immediate from them and right away helped us in quenching our technological thirst to visit these plants and celebrate the start of our Golden Jubilee Year.

So we began our celebrations by gathering in the College Campus on 14th morning and meeting the Principal, Professor E. V. Prasad and some faculty members. We started our day long trip courtesy GMR from the campus first to GMR Barge Mounted Combined Cycle Gas and Steam Turbine Plant under completion next to Kakinada Port. Mr. K. J. Jollymoan from Vemagiri organized our trip. Mr. Tulsiram a bright young engineer in Kakinada Barge Mounted Plant explained to the team the present status of the plant coming up to be operational in the second quarter of 2010. The faculty and students from JNTU ECK joined us and enjoyed the field presentation, particularly the girl students participated in this presentation, see the attached photo.

We then moved to Vemagiri plant, where we were received by Mr. Arunendu Saha, Head of the Plant. He was kind to take us through the history of GMR Energy group beginning from Chennai power plant and the present plants in Kakinada Port and Vemagiri and the status of upcoming projects in Badarinath, Kamalanga and Chattisgarh … amongst others. He was nice to have presented local artifacts to the ladies accompanying us before we departed back to Kakinada.

When we were back, we all gathered in front of imposing Jawaharlal Nehru's statue at the entrance of JNTU and treated ourselves with a historical photo for our class.

Mr. Yajna Narayan Sarma our class mate could not attend during the day and came all the way from Vizag in a car and joined the group in the evening. Professor Allam Appa Rao, Vice-Chancellor has also joined the group by that time.

On the 15th the Alumni met the current students. We had great fun in telling them about our era. Current students had lot of questions and doubts which were answered by our batch. Then we had lunch with students before gradually departing the College.

It was indeed an enjoyable trip to our Alma-Mater and gave all of us immense joy. We recollected how our teachers have dedicated themselves in shaping us and preparing us for the future with love and affection. The knowledge they gave us stood times of 50 years during which technology changed exponentially and yet their training for continuous learning and thinking helped us serve the Nation in a highly satisfactory manner.

We all hope to meet on Sunday 19th December evening in Hyderabad and then celebrate our 50th golden jubilee in April 2010 in Kakinada.

We are all indebted to GMR Energy Limited for taking us around their plants, to Engineering College faculty and students, particularly to Principal Dr. E. V. Prasad for their help in organizing accommodation and meetings; finally we are all grateful to Professor Allam Appa Rao for courtesy shown to us and hospitality during this busy weekend of Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday celebrations.