Vedre Ramachandra Reddy was, in 1951, the first landlord to donate land to the poor as part of the Bhoodan movement in Andhra Pradesh, India.[1][2][3][4]
Vedre Ramachandra Reddy got his title " Bhoodhan " as he was the foremost person to help start the great land donation movement in early 1950s in Andhra Pradesh at a village called Pochampally in the Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh. He was a great social worker and noble man. Acharya Vinobha Bhave started the land donation movement in Pochampally village in April 1951 with initiation of donation of 250 acres (1 km²) of land from Ramachandra Reddy Vedre, which led to a total of 1 million acres (4,000 km²) of land donation and distribution among the poor in post independence era in India.
Ramachandra Reddy Vedre was born on July 13, 1905 and died on December 9, 1986. He helped set up a bhoodhan movement in pochampally which is maintained under a bhoodhan trust movement till date with the help of his sons.
Ramachandra Reddy was born into a very prominent family during the Nizam Rule in Deccan. He completed his law/Barrister training in Feguson Law college in Pune, After practicing for a few years, he resigned after he was fed up with British system and joined social reform and helped initiate Land Donation movement in Pochampally in Andhra Pradesh.
Below is a small article from the speech of then Prime Minister of India Shri. P.V. Narsimha Rao... "So it was, that genius of the great Vinoba Bhave said, "O.K., let us ask for land". If the land is available, let us distribute it. Then what? If you get the land, you don't have to give the gun for a land. O.K. One part of it is solved. So Mr. Ramachandra Reddy of this particular village came forward and said, "I have got 100 or there was a number of acres of land. I am going to give it free". After that many of us followed suit. But he was the first donor. And at Pochampalli a movement, a huge, massive, magnificent movement called Bhoodan Movement was born.
On April 18, 1951, the historic day of the very genesis of the Bhoodan movement, Vinoba entered Nalgonda district, the centre of Communist activity. The organisers had arranged Vinoba's stay at Pochampalli, a large village with about 700 families, of whom two-thirds were landless. Pochampalli gave Vinoba a warm welcome. Vinoba went to visit the Harijan (the Untouchables) colony. By early afternoon villagers began to gather around Vinoba at Vinoba's cottage. The Harijans 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, Ram Chandra 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, Ram Chandra Reddy got up & repeated his promise to offer 250 acres of land to the Harijans. This incident neither planned nor imagined was the very genesis of the Bhoodan movement & it made Vinoba think that therein lay the potentiality of solving the land problem of India. This movement later on developed into a village gift or Gramdan movement. This movement was a part of a comprehensive movement for the establishment of a Sarvodaya Society (The Rise of All socio-economic-political order), both in India & outside India.