Hanuman Junction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hanuman Junction is a town which gets its name because of the four road junction near the HanumanTemple. This town is in the border between Krishna and West Godavari districts in Andhra Pradesh state in India.
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[edit] Roads
National Highway number 5 (NH5)[1]intersects the major district road from Machilipatnam to Nuzividu (continues into other districts) along the side of the temple of Lord Hanuman.Hanuman temple is exactly located at the intersection of the two roads and hence forth town is named as Hanuman Junction. The idol (Vigraham) of Sri Anjaneya does not quite quote the oft seen muscular, heavy built idols resembling of Anjaneya. Here Hanuman is placid and more akin to that of a human form rather than having ape's facial features. The roads are called Gudivada road (road towards Gudivada, Machilipatanam), Vijayawada road (road towards Vijayawada, Nellore and Madras.(NH5)), Eluru road (road towards Eluru, Rajamundry, Visakhapatnam and Culcutta. (NH5)), Nuziveedu road (road towards Nuziveedu,Tiruvuru,Khammam,Kottagudem). The feet of the idol separate Krishna and West Godavari Districts. Locals believe the Lord Hanuman (god of courage and destroyer of evil spirits) to be protector of the town and is worshiped irrespective of religion here.
[edit] History
This town has its beginnings in early 1950s when people started to migrate mainly from villages near Gudivada, Nuziveedu and other villages looking for work. As this was located on the Chennai-Culcutta highway first businesses to start in this place were mainly hotels Indra Bhavan(out of business, not to be mistaken with Indra Bhavan which is located on Vijayawada road now), sweet shops Rama sweets(out of business) and lorry/automobile repair shops to cater for the travelers and lorry drivers on the NH5.
A cooperative sugar factory Hanuman co-operative sugars (later sold to a private company and currently trading as Delta sugars) [2] was started in late 60's in Veeravalli about 5 km from today's Hanuman Junction. The agriculture industry around Hanuman Junction has turned from paddy to sugar cane as the latter was more lucrative. This saw more people moving to Hanuman Junction from places as far as Vijayanagaram district seeking livelihood as manual labour for sugar cane farming. As this influx grew the village started to grow in all four road directions although more developments can be seen on the NH5 road stretch today. This town grew as more people migrated and more businesses were set up like poultry farms, tobacco grading, cattle market, cinema theatres, rice mills and transport companies in the early 70's. The cattle market in Hanuman Junction is considered to be among the largest in state of Andhra Pradesh until the mid 90's. Even today it does decent business and is open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays although tractors and heavy machinery replaced ox and buffaloes for farming needs. The Vijaya co-operative dairy setup in the 80's is one of the few co-operative dairies which makes profit in Andhra Pradesh. The transport industry has seen a huge rise between early 90's and most of the businesses in Hanuman Junction today are related to it. The demolition of buildings due to widening of NH5 in the late 90's and early 2000 has resulted in relocation of many businesses and in fact contributed to the growth of the town as these were setup towards the end of town limits.
[edit] Today
This town's development is impeded as it is divided among districts, constituencies,mandals and panchayats. Many government records do not have the town in their records but recognize it by the mandal or panchayat(Bapulapadu mandalam, Kanumolu mandalam, Tallamudi mandalam,appanaveedu etc) name. The railway station it self is named as Nuziveedu as this was constructed before the town came into existence. Only few families among the initial settlers who worked towards the growth of this town can be still seen here today ( families with surnames like Cherukuri,Kamineni,Veerapaneni, Mareedu,Jogi, Donepudi,Jorige etc) and the rest migrated to larger cities. There are numerous rice mills, poultry farms, market yards, hospitals,movie theaters, schools and vehicle showrooms in the town but a large part of businesses are related to logistics. Higher educational institutions, wholesale markets, super specialty hospitals located in Eluru, Vijayawada, Gudivada are with in easy access to the town's population.Today this town is surrounded by several palm oil plantations, the produce of which is being processed at Sical plant located at Ampapuram.
[edit] The film
The movie with the same name Hanuman Junction was made in 2001 and does not bear any resemblance to the town. A remake of Malayalam blockbuster hit, Tenkasi Pattanam. It starred Jagapati Babu, Arjun, Laya, and Sneha. This film was directed by M. Raja.
