Chirag Naik and Datta Damodar Naik address the media.
Photo Credits: Santosh Mirajkar
MARGAO
Leading businessman Chirag Datta Naik has donated Rs one crore to Konkani Bhasha Mandal on the occasion of the 70th birthday of his father, Margao businessman and thinker, Datta Damodar Naik, on December 30, 2024.
Datta Damodar Naik, who also attended the media briefing, said that a separate corpus of Rs five crore will be set up under the Fountainhead Charitable Trust over a period of five years to support the educational requirements of deserving students, besides other social activities.
Addressing the media, Chirag said that Konkani Bhasha Mandal will organise the Chitrangi Melava and Samajik Parishad on a progressive theme to be held every alternate year out of the interest accrued from the corpus.
“A full-day workshop on the literature of past and present Konkani writers will be held every year. The budget will also be earmarked for the documentation of experiences of those downtrodden people who are unable to express their experiences in writing. This documentation will later be published in the form of a book,” he said.
The donor has also proposed to Konkani Bhasha Mandal to organise Konkani examinations benchmarking the Hindi examinations organised by Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Vardha, and the Sanskrit and Mathematics examinations conducted by Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune. These examinations could be in five tiers – Balbodhini, Pravesh, Prabodh, Praveen, and Pandit, he said.
Chirag further announced that the budget will also be earmarked to make 6-8 telefilms on the best stories written by Konkani writers. “We are also forming the Fountainhead Charitable Trust with a corpus of Rs 5 crores built over the next few years. Scholarships for needy students will be given from the interest incurred. The trust is going to be chaired by Prof. Bhaskar Nayak and Dr Susheela Sawant Mendes, with Vijay Hede and Prashant Naik as members,” Chirag added.
