A carpenter who turned editor, a former RJ who is sustaining a dying cattle breed – the top Social Stories of the week

As a young boy, Raju Jangid wanted to become a cricketer, but destiny had other plans, and he is now an editor on Wikipedia’s Hindi platform. Rajavel Nagarajan, on the other hand, quit his high paying job to save the dying breed of Umblachery cows.

Meanwhile, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Twitter that the US-based tech giant is providing more than $150 million to promote vaccine education and equitable distribution.

Here are the top Social Stories of the week:

22-year-old Raju Jangid has edited over 57,000 Hindi Wikipedia pages to date

Raju Jangid had wanted to become a cricketer. But, in order to support his family’s finances, the 22-year-old found work as a carpenter right after completing his Class 10.

His flair for Hindi language led him to editing pages on Hindi Wikipedia in 2015. To date, he has created about 1,890 new entries and edited close to 57,000 pages of the free online encyclopaedia.

Raju’s consistent and diligent efforts led him to create 750 new pages, and edit about 8,000 articles on his keypad mobile phone. And, alongside his day job as a carpenter, he also managed to complete his Bachelor in Arts.

The social workers who won the Padma Awards

The nation’s highest civilian awards — Padma Vibhushan (for exceptional and distinguished service); Padma Bhushan (distinguished service of a high order); and Padma Shri (distinguished service) — are conferred on the eve of Republic Day.

This year, seven Padma Vibhushan winners, 10 Padma Bhushan winners, and 102 Padma Shri awardees were declared, out of which, 15 awardees were recognised for social work.

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Republic Day 2021: 11 facts about our country that will make you proud to be Indian

On Republic Day 2021, SocialStory put together a list of India’s achievements since 1950. From becoming the first country to launch an atomic energy programme, to Indian Railways becoming one of the world’s largest rail networks under a single management, take a look at some of India’s achievements.

The RJ who quit his job to save a breed of cattle from extinction

Though primarily based in Chennai, Rajavel Nagarajan hails from Thiruvarur district. His hometown is also home to a unique breed of cows and bulls – the Umblachery.

The Umblachery is an Indian breed of zebuine cattle (those that have a hump on their backs), unique to the Cauvery delta districts of Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, and Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. However, due to their low milk production as compared to other cattle, and subsequent low demand, their numbers have kept dropping.

Disheartened at this state of affairs, Rajavel decided to quit his career as an RJ, and move back to his hometown to take care of this breed. He also encourages other farmers to use this breed.

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Meet the dog lover from Bengaluru who runs a small business to help animals

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s $150M investment to increase access to COVID-19 vaccines

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday announced on Twitter that the US-based tech giant is "providing more than $150 million to promote vaccine education and equitable distribution, and making it easier to find locally relevant information, including when and where to get the vaccine." 

In a blog post titled ‘How we’re helping get vaccines to more people’, Pichai said that Google had been diligent in getting people the information they needed to keep their families safe and healthy. It has even partnered with other corporates, including Apple, to build exposure notification technology to fight the spread of COVID-19 around the world.