The capital Amaravati construction project is now a Guinness record. The rare feat was made possible by the novel scheme ‘My Brick My Amaravati” the chief minister N Chandrababau Naidu launched last month.
The program basically intended to involve all the Telugu people, including those living in far off places on the globe, to become partners in the construction of the new capital in one way or the other. The campaign was devised on crowd funding technique to increase people’s participation in the capital development process. The crowdfunding project uses a concept of selling e-bricks at the cost of 10 rupees/brick. A donor can choose the number of bricks, he wants to donate and use online payment to make the donation , the donor’s name along with their city & state are listed in the donors page once the donors payment is successfully processed. The campaign was an instant success. As on November 13, as many as 2,14,230 people donated 46, 50,477 e-bricks for the construction of the capital. The online sales reached peak on November 10.
According to Vijayawada MP Kesineni Nani a world record had been attempted through this novel campaign. The party had attempted to achieve a world record in the people’s participation in the construction of a capital city. “Nowhere has such an experiment been conducted in the world,” he said adding that, they wanted this record by attracting maximum online donations from individuals for a cause in any 24 hour-time. “We achieved the feat on Tuesday (November 10) when as many as 1,43,740 individuals purchased e-bricks from across Andhra Pradesh,” said K. Pattabhiram, member of the State TDP committee monitoring the campaign.
According to Pattabhiram the Amaravati project had broken the earlier record of 1,05,800 online buying by individuals in 24 hours for a cause by a Chinese NGO. “It is a tough task to mobilize such mass online buying. We have enrolled 500 volunteers to help the donors make online purchase of the e-bricks. There had been the constant fear of websites crashing due to excess traffic, the payment gateway may stop functioning. But finally, we made it and informed the Chief Minister that we had a splendid Deepavali gift for him,” said Pattabhiram.
The representatives of the Guinness Book of World Record are expected to issue the record certificate in the next 10 days to the officials of the CRDA. The TDP conducted a 10-day campaign in the state state to create awareness among the people on the need to donate for Amaravati by buying the e-bricks. The response was unprecedented and people from all corners of the State came forward to become partners in the construction of Amaravati and the ‘ my brick my Amaravati ‘ a grand success.
