World spiritual fest fails to create buzz
Tirupati: The preparations and selection of programmes for the World Spiritual Festival to be held in pilgrim city for three days from March 23 to 25 raising many eye brows on its objectives and success. The State government choose the temple city for the event in view of its importance in spiritual matters and allocated Rs 2.5 crore to conduct the event.
As part of smart city initiative, the government wants to take up the city’s pride to further levels by organising prestigious events. District Collector has convened the meetings with AP Tourism Department which will be the chief organiser of the programme and other departments like Municipal Corporation of Tirupati, TUDA etc.
to give a direction to the event. VIBRI media was selected as the event manager with whom the Tourism Department has to work with. District Tourism Officer (DTO) DV Chandramouli Reddy has said that during the three days of festival, Yoga and meditation programmes will be held from 7 to 8.30 am at Shilparamam and in the evening various programmes like spiritual discourses, classical dance, music and song shows will be held from 6.30 pm at Tarakarama Stadium.
Those who will perform here include, Voddiparthi Padmakar, G Balakrishna Prasad, Sivamani drums, Kondaveeti Jyothirmai, Medasani Mohan and others. Hemachandra and Sravana Bhargavi will participate in a musical show. Of them, Balakrishna Prasad and Medasani Mohan belongs to Tirupati only and were familiar to denizens and they had conducted several programmes here.
Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar will conduct Maha Satsang on March 24 at Tarakarama Stadium. Chandramouli also said that lectures on several topics will be held at Mahati auditorium along with one panel discussion. The DTO said that they were taking all steps to make the event a success. However, the festival failed to generate interest among the public.
No international organisation or spiritual leader will be participating in the world festival. Except Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who has international repute, no other spiritual personality of national fame will be attending which obviously makes the festival a lacklustre one. Though the government has allocated huge budget for the event, the event managers seems to have confined to the local or nearby artistes.
The entire focus was laid only on college students and the officials concerned have been concentrating on approaching various colleges to mobilise students. Till now, there was no mood in the city and most of the people were not aware of the festival. BJP leader and advocate Samanchi Srinivas criticised that many people were not aware of spiritual festival which will take place in the city.
Though the government has allotted a huge amount for it, it looks like a private programme as the organisers failed to involve any pontiffs, Seers, or any spiritual personalities. No Dharmic organisation was involved in such an event. “What is the motive of the government to organise such an event with so many lapses.
Tirupati had a reputation of organising several spiritual meetings successfully in the past. TTD has organised such meetings by involving all the Pontiffs in the country. But, what is going on now?”. he asked.
By V Pradeep Kumar