Mr. Kakarala’s TANA Meeting in CA – An Independent Report

The size of California: California is one of the biggest states in United States (250 miles X 770 miles) and is home to several Telugu People. There are several Telugu associations in the state of California, such as Telugu Association of Southern California, Bay Area Telugu Association, San Diego Telugu Association, Silicon Andhra and many more. Also, TANA has thousands of members from this state.
 
The size of meeting: Approximately 250 people, attended Mr. Kakarala’s meeting, which was conducted in Los Angeles. Even though this town is home for Telugu Association of Southern California (TASC), this meeting was hosted under the name of California Telugu Community and was publicized in few websites under a non existing association’s name “California Telugu Association”. This is also a home town of Mr. Alapati Ravi, one of the few who sued TANA.
 
The content of the meeting: The meeting was organized to discuss the topic ‘Redefining the scope and definition of community service within TANA in the wake of recent tragedies hitting Telugu Community’. Contradicting to the topic, majority of the time was allocated to discuss about Mr. Kakarala, his removal from TANA Office, his future plans and his support. However, Mr. Kakarala announced a help line in the name of TANA. This phone service is yet to be established. To make this dream come true, there is lot of work to be done. Since TANA name is tied to this helpline, hopefully Mr. Kakarala and his supporters would take this announcement seriously and wouldn’t prove it as a “failed promise”. Hopefully North American Telugus can ring this number in another week and get the required help.
 
LA Community’s double standard: A key event occurred in LA “In year 2006, Mr. Ravi Koneru (current TANA Board Of Trustee) was terminated as TASC president as his actions were determined non democratic”. Just after two years, the same Los Angeles Telugu Community members are condemning the removal of Kakarala from TANA office, eventhough the TANA board removed him for same non democratic reasons. We can conclude that either the community is following double standards or the attendees are not aware of history which happened just two years ago.
 
The reality: Though this endorsement looks very fancy under the virtual name of “California Telugu Community/Association”, Mr. Kakarala and his supporters should seriously assess the true and new support that they gathered from this meeting, find out how many will actually travel from Los Angeles to Florida to attend the proposed Conference (or) donate him the money to promote the cause. Never the less, this meeting is publicized as “California State supports Prabhakar”.
 
– A. Modepally