ARIYALUR: Grey-haired and bespectacled, K Thyagarajan (72) roams around villages on his moped. A retired headmaster, the septuagenarian from Vilangudi in Ariyalur made the news a week ago, after he started dredging a second lake using money sent by his daughter working in the US. However, things took a drastic turn, with the district administration applying the brakes on his mission citing violations of rules and guidelines. Thyagarajan has now been branded by officials and some unknown villagers as a ‘Person with Personal Agenda’.
Dredging at the three-acre Veerapillai Kuttai lake in Keezhavilangudi (a hamlet of Vilangudi) has stopped and the sand piles remain along the bunds and the water body now looks like a plate of half-eaten food. “I only wanted to serve my village by facilitating accumulation of water by deepening the lake bed. I have removed the wild natural growths which had plagued the lake before excavation. How can my intentions be selfish if sand piles are on the roadsides?” says Thyagarajan.
The sand extracted from the was kept on both sides of T Palur Road with the intention of filling the two-feet gap between the road and houses. “The intention is to fill it and widen the road so people will have more space to make way for passing heavy vehicles,” Thyagarajan said. Trucks laden with limestone from a cement plant pass through the village at high speeds. Villagers said several have died or been injured trying to take cover from passing heavy vehicles whizzing past.
Many of the people from Vilangudi share a very favourable opinion about Thyagarajan, a recipient of the Tamil Nadu government’s Nallaasiriyar award in 2000. He retired in 2004, having worked in five government schools and serving as headmaster in three of them.
Goatherds and many farmers are grateful to him for renovating a village. C Muthamizh Selvan, an advocate from the village, said, “Thyagarajan made few enemies among friends. Why are district administration officials who are not bothered about encroachments and illegal mining worried about a man who is doing good work transparently?”
Thyagarajan receives money from his third daughter Anandhavalli, a software engineer in Denver, Colorado, and an American NGO. It took him about `5.8 lakh to dredge a lake last year. After dredging the Periya Eri, he had acquired permission in 2017 from the Panchayat for dredging and deepening at least six lakes in Vilangudi.