On April 18th 1951, the historic day of the very genesis of the Bhoodan movement, Vinoba Bhave entered the Pochampally mandal in Nalgonda district, the centre of Communist activity. The organisers had arranged Vinoba's stay at Pochampally, a large village with about 700 families, of whom two-thirds were landless. By early afternoon villagers began to gather around Vinoba at Vinoba's cottage. The V
illagers asked for eighty acres of land, forty wet, forty dry for forty families that would be enough. Then Vinoba asked," If it is not possible to get land from the government, is there not something villagers themselves could do ?" To everyone's surprise, Vedre Ramchandra Reddy, the local landlord got up & said in a rather excited voice: "I will give you 250 acres for these people" At his evening prayer meeting, he repeated his promise to offer 250 acres of land to the villagers. This incident neither planned nor imagined was the very genesis of the Bhoodan movement & it made Vinoba think that there in lay the potentiality of solving the land problem of India. This movement later on developed into a village gift or Gramdan movement. As the huge, massive and magnificent movement called Bhoodan Movement was born at this village Pochampally, the village renamed to Bhoodan Pochampally. In 1999, the weaving industry of Bhoodan Pochampally came to limelight when a young weaver C Mallesham developed a machine for automating the time consuming, laborious and painful Asu process of winding of yarn before the dyeing and weaving is done. The innovation was recognized by National Innovation Foundation – India.
