At 83, Andhra Pradesh's Prakasa Rao Fulfills Dream Of Becoming Lawyer

In today’s times, many young people are taking their own lives due to an inability to cope with minor setbacks. Remarkably, an elderly man like Bichinepalli Prakasa Rao has become a lawyer at this stage of his lowest phase of life, setting an example for both youth and society.

Recently, Local 18 visited his home to extend special congratulations to him. During the visit, Prakasa Rao shared that he was born in 1941, before India gained independence, and spent his childhood in the Mangalapalli and Nakirekal mandals of Nalgonda district. He retired in 1999 as a senior assistant in the Excise Department.

Prakasa Rao worked in the NSP department at the Miryalaguda branch in 1960 and later joined the Abkari department after resigning in 1964. He underwent bypass surgery in 2009. Despite the immense personal loss of his wife, daughter-in-law, elder son (in 2016), and younger son (in 2023 due to kidney failure), Prakasa Rao continued his life journey with unwavering self-confidence.

After some time, he took a brief rest in Mangalapalli village. He also became involved with Osmania Gandhi Hospital, where he helped provide education and medical care to the underprivileged through evening schools. Realizing that village panchayats often operated without proper legal understanding, he took it upon himself to organize awareness conferences in each village to educate people about the law. Prakasa Rao completed his LLB from PMR College, Hyderabad, in 2009 and received his law degree in 2011.

He began practising as a lawyer in 2012, handling numerous cases. Despite the many tragedies he faced within his family, Prakasa Rao achieved his goal of becoming a lawyer, serving as an inspiration to many young people.

In another story, an 89-year-old Rhode Island man has achieved a goal he spent two decades working toward and nearly a lifetime thinking about — earning his Ph.D. and becoming a physicist. Manfred Steiner recently defended his dissertation successfully at Brown University in Providence. Steiner cherishes this degree because it’s what he always wanted — and because he overcame health problems that could have derailed his studies.