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Great Scientists A community which took up to modern English education only about 40-50 years back has contributed very significantly to the scientific development in India. Dr. Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is the name that comes uppermost to the mind. He has been recognized as the Father of Green Revolution in India. Dr.M.S.Swaminathan took his Ph.D from the School of Agriculture in Cambridge in 1952. He spent the next two decades in research on various crops and in basic and applied genetics at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. He developed high yielding strains of wheat and rice. Dr.Swaminathan is recepient of over forty awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the World Food Prize in 1987, the S S Bhatnagar Award, the Birbal Sahni Medal and the Mendel Memorial Award. In 1...

By Gramam, what is meant is streets in a locality with continuous row houses exclusively populated by Kerala Iyers, each sharing a common wall. There would be houses on both sides in most of the places but there are streets with houses on only one side in some cases. Due to the fact that Kerala is in a very heavy rainfall area and there was a need for storing paddy after every harvest for the till next harvest, these houses had also some architectural peculiarity. Each house normally had a veranda. After this there would be a passage to the main house, on one side of which there used to be a Pathayam (box for storing Paddy), below the pathayam, there would be a Nilavarakundu, which used to be the place of storage of things that ar...

The Kerala Iyers have preserved the traditional festivals as celebrated by them in Tamil Nadu and have added have added a few festivals from Kerala. But the hallmark of their celebration is its sober nature. Much of the fan fare associated with festivals in Tamil Nadu is absent in Kerala. Also due to some unknown reason some new traditions, which are absent both in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, have been added in the celebration. The most important festivals are:- Onam : Celebrated in late August or early September. It is possibly the most important festival of Kerala and is celebrated irrespective of religious beliefs. As per the legend, King Mahabali (Maveli) who once upon a time ruled Kerala visits his citizens during this period...