3 months ago
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The Cuddalore territory administration, successful relation with Ezhuthaga Iyakkam (Write Movement) and the Tamil Nadu Prisons Department, has launched a programme to empower inmates of the Cuddalore Central Prison to enactment pen to paper, enabling them to go published authors. The programme offers them training, mentorship, arsenic good arsenic a way to redemption done literature.
The inaugural called Sirayil Mulaitha Siragagul (Wings that Sprouted successful Prison) was formally launched astatine the Cuddalore Central Prison by erstwhile Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary V. Irai Anbu connected Wednesday (February 11, 2026). It offers grooming to situation inmates connected penning books, helping alteration their thoughts into the written word. In its archetypal phase, 101 inmates, who person expressed interest, person been chosen to beryllium developed arsenic writers.
Volunteers attached to Ezhuthaga Iyyakam volition sojourn the situation and behaviour bi-monthly sessions, guiding inmates done each stage: from drafting earthy thoughts to editing, and past last publication.
According to Mr. Irai Anbu: “This isn’t conscionable penning – it’s transformation. This task is simply a caller endeavour not conscionable for India but for the world. In 1994, portion serving arsenic Additional Collector successful Cuddalore, I organised a code contention for the inmates present nether Arivoli Iyakkam. For the archetypal clip successful India, we provided vocational grooming to inmates to prolong their livelihoods, auctioned the products they made, and deposited the proceeds into their slope accounts.”
Expanding Ezhuthaga Iyakkam
“In Kannagi Nagar successful Chennai, which is stigmatised arsenic a hub of criminals, we undertook acquisition efforts arsenic portion of Ezhuthaga Iyakkam. By personally visiting students’ homes to motivate them, we person present produced implicit 400 first-generation graduates. Similarly, a postulation of stories written by 50 students from the locality is acceptable to beryllium released successful different 10 days,” helium added.
“In prison, inmates person solitude and time. Writing volition service arsenic a transmission to purify their memories. Once you commencement writing, adjacent mean events go extraordinary. We’ll thatch the inmates however to write, edit, refine, beautify, and alteration their enactment into a publication – and past people it. Though they entered arsenic convicts, they volition permission arsenic creators and writers, carrying their books with them,” helium added.
According to Collector Sibi Adhithya Senthil Kumar, the selected prisoners volition beryllium empowered successful penning and publishing a publication – beryllium it fiction, non-fiction, letters, oregon essays.
“The Prison Department identified 101 prisoners who person shown involvement and privation to write. Starting this week, volunteers volition beryllium gathering and interacting with the prisoners to place what they similar and what they privation to write. It could beryllium an absorbing incidental from the prisoner’s life, their family, oregon adjacent the transgression itself.”
The process aims to clarify their thought processes by articulating experiences, specified arsenic beingness incidents, and fostering idiosyncratic reform. The volunteers volition assistance streamline their thoughts during feedback sessions and volition travel retired with a draft.
“When the captive leaves the prison, helium volition person written a book. This volition assistance him integrate amended into society. Prison is reformative, and this is the adjacent step,” Mr. Kumar said, adding an due steadfast volition beryllium identified to people their work.
