Angalakuduru

Infobox Indian Jurisdiction
type = Village
native_name = Angalakuduru
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state_name = Andhra Pradesh
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region = Coastal Andhra
district = Guntur
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climate = Tropical
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population_total = 20000
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official_languages = Telugu
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Angalakuduru is a medium size village in Tenali Mandalam in the Guntur District, in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The village is about 5 km from Tenali on a state road, which links Tenali and Guntur and is about 20km from the district headquarters in Guntur City. And it is about 300 km from the state capital Hyderabad and can be reached via Vijayawada on NH9 (It became somewhat motorable in recent days) and Tenali.

According to one legend, the original name of this village used to be "Anganala Koduru". 'Anganala' means Womens' and Koduru is a colloquial synonym for 'village'. The full meaning is "Womens' village". In ancient times women used to be more in number than men in this village, thus the name. Over a period of time the name was transformed into "Angalakuduru". But this story is only heresay, no historical or documentary evidence is available.

Nighbouring villages are Sangam Jagarlamudi on the West, Kopalle on the North, Chavavari Palem and Yadlapalli on the South and the Mandal headquarters, Tenali is on the East.

The village is well connected by both road and railway networks to travel to the nearby towns and villages. The village has all the facilities like Govt Post office, panchayat office (Village administration office) primary health center, and govt run Veterinary Hospital. Drinking water was never a problem in this village for the last 100 years due to excellent underground water table. The village has good (Concrete) roads, initially the work of Alapati Venkataramaiah, once a Minister in State Government. He is fondly remembered even today, after 40 years of his death, for his excellent contribution towards the development of the region.

Agriculture is prevalent, with rice, lemon, gram and vegetables all being grown. Corn growing has also become a trend in the recent years since the yield of Gram has dwindled over the past 10 years and the support price of corn has become profitable. The first crop of the year has always been Rice and the second crop is usually Gram or Corn. The cultivated fields are fed by number of fresh water canals which are branches of Krishna river. The canals are branched out at Prakasam Barrage (reservoir) built on the river Krishna by a renowned British Architect Sir Arthur Cotton before independence. The underground water table is substantial due to the seepage from these canals. Water flows for almost 9 months in the year through these canals, except for 3 months during the summer. Even the so called dry lands are cultivated (Lemon, Betel leaves, Banana Plantation etc.) using the ground water. This village is a part of a wider Tenali (Mandalam) area, which is extensively cultivated and generally inhabited by well to do farmers and businessmen of farm produce.

Till the late eighties, the farming used be done by the farmers (land owners) themselves, but the situation has changed drastically as they begun to lease out their lands to other poor farmers for a share in the produce. This is mostly because of division of families (therby division of land and decreased output) and high education rate in these families. Since, The educated children of these farming famlies started leaving the village for white collored jobs in cities, virtually there is nobody left in the family to take care of the farming. This is the situation in most of the farming villages of the state. Virtually every true land owner is dependent on the lease-outs.

Cattle (mostly Buffalos and no cows) raising was very much prevalent uptill the late nineties, but has come down substantially due to high cost of fodder and labour.

Climate here is like at any other tropical places. The climate is mostly sultry. The max temp can reach up to 46 C in peak summer (April and May) and rarely goes down below 23 C in Winter (December and January).The Humidity is always well above 75% and can reach upto 95% during Summer. The best time to visit the village is, of course, Winter (Nov-Feb) during which the climate would be very pleasant.

The staple food of the people in the village is, ofcourse, rice, vegetables and meat like Lamb, Chicken and Fish and no Beef or Pork.

Ninety percent of the people in the village belong to Hindu Religion. Other Ten percent make up the minorities like Muslims and Christians. Communal hormony is excellent and one can not really remember any kind of a skirmish between the religious groups. Political situation in the village is also stable, even though the people are divided as far as their political affliations are concerned. The tempers rise up a bit (but never to alarming proportions) during General elections to the State assembly or Loksabha but calm down once the elections are over. The competitive spirit prevalent during elections would be reduced to friendly banter after the elections.

Land line telephone density is moderate, but the cell phone usage has substantially increased over the last few years. Virtually everybody uses a cell phone these days.

The village is located in the proximity of the municipal town Tenali. Angalakuduru is mostly dependent on this town for essentials and shopping for products and services like higher education, provisions, textiles, gold, entertainment, health care and medicine, as well as other small things which are not available in the village. It is also not unusual for people to go to either Guntur or Vijayawada (40 km) for the above purposes.

The land prices in this village have substantially gone up in the last few years, partly due to real estate boom and due to other reasons like its proximity to towns like Tenali and the location on the state highway to Guntur and well connected by road and railway networks to other places. Another valid reason is that this village has no water shortage for the last 100 years.

The village has 4 to 5 temples of Venugopala Swamy, Anjaneya, Shiva, Sri Rama as well as two government run schools: a primary school and a high school. In the temple of "Srirama" free boarding and lodging was being provided for the people who were passing through the village during the ancient times, when people used to believe in the adage " Athidhi Devobhava" (Guest is equivalent to God). Hence it is also called "Satram" in telugu. The only language spoken in the village is Telugu.