The day before yesterday Alka brought to my attention a very interesting piece of news that proves that when it comes to finding solutions, the only thing that manifests a result is the desire to get the result.

There is a person in Uttarakhan (a hilly state in Northern India) who has succeeded in single-handedly increasing the forest cover of the entire state. Whereas big organizations and governments are bickering at the UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen with no real intention of protecting the forests and clearing up the air, Mr. Kalyan Singh Rawat has practically triggered a major ecological revolution, according to this link in The Pioneer. Instead of trying to make people aware of the importance of protecting the existing trees and planting new trees (this would have meant banging his head in the wall) he associated the act of planting a tree sapling to the marriage ceremony. Planting a tree just after tying the nuptial knot became an auspicious act.

Religion can create hurdles and given the right direction it can also usher great positive upheavals and that’s what Mr. Rawat has achieved with an ingenious idea. How did he achieve this?

A nuptial couple plants a sapling in the maternal village of the bride to be nurtured by her family: The cost — negligible. This practice spreads and becomes a tradition at every wedding solemnised: The return — a quantum leap in the forest cover of the area. This is the Maiti movement, meaning mother’s home, the vision of Kalyan Singh Rawat, an unassuming common man with an uncommon urge to protect the environment. Then a teacher in the Government Inter College, Rawat brought a humble but determined start to the movement in 1995 in Gwaldam hamlet in Chamoli district of Garhwal.

After the tree has been planted it becomes the responsibility of the girl’s family to make sure that it remains green and grows into a full tree. Since it is associated with the girl’s prosperity and fertility, a tree dies in the rarest of the rare situations and the survival rate is almost 100%.

This has significantly increased the forest cover and people of even adjacent states are quickly embracing the practice. It has taken him 15 years and almost no money, and now 6,000 villages in 18 states are following this practice.

This news reminded me of Mahatma Gandhi. He also used (at least I think so) a weakness into strength. He knew that it was not physically possible for the Indians to throw the British out (at that time perhaps). But they had a great tolerance for violence. So no matter how much violence the British inflicted upon them, they kept their movement peaceful.

Mr. Rawat has achieved the same thing. He realized that people in India follow religion and tradition like a herd and once the planting of the tree caught on, it would be very difficult to deter them from doing it. Great thinkers and philosophers like Raja Ram Mohan Rai also used religion to re-awaken people’s pride and rid the society of cruel and demeaning rituals. What if somehow we’re able to associate religion with keeping our cities clean, eradicating corruption, illiteracy and poverty and loving fellow citizens?

People all over the world will be participating in the Earth Hour today by switching off their lights and doing their bid in trying to stop global warming? Can this really stop global warming? The act in itself may not, but the awareness created in the process certainly will. Do show that you support earth, and you care for your children and their children.

Says this article. First I thought it’s the good old nimbu that they’ll be squeezing into the oceans, and was wondering how they were planning to grow so many limes. But then I discovered it’s actually limestone lime they are talking about. Scientists claim that if you add lime to sea water it increases its ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. This solution has been in circulation for many years but the problem is that too much lime is required (obviously) and the process of extracting lime from limestone releases lots of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The new process of obtaining lime from limestone does generate CO₂, but once this lime is added to the sea water the sea water will absorb double the amount released, this means the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be brought to the level of pre-industrial age. Australia’s Nullarbor Plain is being considered for the project as it has 10000 cubic kilometers of lime.

But what will happen to the extra carbon the sea absorbs? Maybe then the absorbed carbon will be re-absorbed by the marine plant life releasing oxygen in return. Sounds good.

This Royal Bengal pregnant tigress was saved from agitated and scared villagers in the Sundarbans, by the Forest Department personnel. The cat had inadvertently strayed into a West Bengal village. There perhaps she attacked the cattle and the villagers tried to stone her to death. It’s amazing how fast the Forest Department people reached the spot and rescued the traumatized animal.

Source

In The Pioneer (our newspaper) there was scathing editorial terming the villagers as barbarians. Even the previous day there was a screaming headline on the first page. Although such news is sensational and encourages us to further stereotype the tribals and the villagers living around jungles I think they are the least responsible for the destruction of plants and animals the world over. Take for instance this case, if a tigress enters your village and attacks your cattle and your loved once are you going to worry about tiger conservation and animal cruelty at that time? Hardly. By all means you will try to kill the animal. Don’t we try to chase away and if that is not possible kill the insects that enter our houses lest they sting someone?

It’s people living in the cities who are actually responsible for the destruction of flora and fauna because they have least regard for the environment. They indiscriminately use products made of scarce natural resources and they pollute the air with their vehicles and other appliances. New settlements and colonies are constantly being set up on the areas cleared of jungles. The ever-increasing population puts constant pressure on the supply of food and consequently more forest area has to be cleared.

Anyway we are constantly criticizing the people working in the Forest Department. This time they showed an exemplary courage by saving the animal, getting it properly treated and then releasing it back into its original habitat. They deserve lots of praise.

[tags]royal bengal tiger, sundarbans, west bengal[/tags]

Read the story here.

Gandhiji uttered “Hai Ram” thrice before the three bullets pumped in by Nathuram Godse drained life out of him. The expression still adorns his samadhi at Raj Ghat. To highlight that the historical significance of the of the Ramsetu bridge is nothing but a mythical illusion, the Indian central government has told the Supreme Court that there is no proof of Lord Ram ever existing, or for that matter of all the sundry characters existing in the epic Ramayana. So has the government turned anti-Gandhi all of a sudden? If the Mahatma had the word Ram on his lips while he breathed his last breath, did he die uttering a false god?

With the nuclear deal controversy not showing signs of abating due to the churlishly intransigent Left (and the BJP) some say snap polls are imminent, and the Congress is surely preparing for that eventuality by playing the ultimate communal card. By denying one of the mightiest of Hindu gods it’s anybody’s guess whom the Congress is trying to please. Not Rawan, surely, because he becomes false too.

It’ll be stupid to believe that the center wants to demolish the Ramsetu bridge simply for economics because the scientists have said time and again that the environmental costs of the Sethusamudram project will be immeasurable, from inviting tsunamis to destroying the pre-historical coral reef (it’s a PDF). The central agenda of Congress (who is in power at the center right now) is to appease the minorities by showing that it doesn’t give two hoots to the majority’s (Hindus) sentiments. And of course there is lots of money to be made by the politicians, the builders and the contractors.

The response from the BJP and the VHP has been predictable. But sadly, this is the only kind of response that mostly works in our country these days. As we were discussing yesterday at home, in our country where more than 70% of population survives on Rs. 20 per day, who is bothered about the environment, but yes, Ram heats up the emotions. So if the bridge can be saved using the plank of religion, then be it.

What do I think about the existence of Ram? I’ll write about it in another post, in the meantime, let’s have a poll on Ram.

[tags]ramsetu bridge, Sethusamudram project, ram, environment[/tags]

A very happy independence day to all my readers. I know this post comes a bit late but I purposely didn’t write the day-before-yesterday because first, I thought everybody would be writing about it and second, after a long time I took a day off (this means, I didn’t open my laptop or check my email or respond to queries, etc.). Third, I’m suffering with a bad bout of tonsillitis. But I read a lot.

Our newspaper was filled with articles written by various columnists talking about what’s been achieved and what’s been lost in the past 60 years of India’s, some even called it illusory, independence. With so much misery, poverty, backwardness, corruption, fall of ethos, rampant hatred and intolerance, are we really free? Does freedom merely mean kicking out the foreign rulers? Look out in the street: doesn’t the common man look like a loser, totally defeated and devoid of dignity? Does a free nation look like this?

I agree with the thought but we are a lot better off than we were during the British, or even the Mughal rule. Whatever mess we create here, it is our own mess. We are always free to clear this mess, whether ideological, economic or social, whenever we feel like it (it’s another thing we don’t feel like it). Despite our politicians and destructive policy makers some of us have made things better. Whether one agrees or not, the working conditions are far better than what they used to be. The progress is in certain, limited quarters, but this is how progress starts — it gradually spreads.

The past always seems romantic and quixotic, but every age has its dark side. Chandan Mitra of the Pioneer in a recent article evoked the 60-year journey of the Hindi film music. We’re seeing the worst phase these days, but the golden phase of the Hindi film music survived with the backdrop of the Chinese invasion, political uncertainty, abysmal poverty, industrial strife and a slew of natural calamities. Poetic and all is fine, but if you don’t have food to eat or clothes to wear, you cannot simply survive on melodies (some did actually).

I think the present is the best time to live, whether in India (I’m talking about the functioning, civilized world, and not about communities that are still living in the 700 AD world) or anywhere else. We are at the threshold of a civilizational shift. Technology and new thinking is helping us do things better, faster, and it is also wrecking havoc on our environment, which needs to be tackled with the greatest urgency. The poverty is galling, but we have the means, but not enough will, to eradicate it. We have conquered most of the diseases and ailments (at least those who can afford) and the natural disasters become untenable only because as a society, as a nation, we don’t prepare for them, or we create ripe ground for them by exploiting the ecology and the environment indiscriminately. For example, the floods in Bihar are being caused due to large-scale deforestation.

I don’t prefer the past because the reins of our destiny were not in our hands. Today they are. We can steer our own paths and the opportunities allude only those who don’t seek them sincerely. All around me I see people wallowing in miseries but in 99.99% of the cases it’s their own doing. The India of today is in the driving seat. If we don’t have the roads, we have the ability to lay them. This is the greatest difference between the past and the present.

[tags]india, independence days, indian independence day[/tags]

Tree-nation.com is a website dedicated to planting 8 million trees in the Sahara desert to fight desertification. The link was sent to me via email by Jeremiah who works with Tree-nation.com. According to the website:

Tree-Nation is an ecological project with a focused objective: To plant 8 million trees in the Sahara to fight desertification! Large-scale plantation of trees will increase the land’s productivity and re-generate the soil.

Tree-nation is an online community in which you can buy your own tree and become the guardian of a real and happy tree that we will plant in our park in Niger.

[tags]plant trees, desertification, deforestation[/tags]

[tags]global warming[/tags]