A ‘Chipko’ agitation by women in Telengana village to save their forest

By G S Radha Krishna

Sep 19, 2020

Hyderabad: It was a black Wednesday for the women of Gunjoti village of Telengana’s Sangareddy district. It was also a replay of Chipko agitation, though on a small scale, enacted in the northern district of the state to save 25 species of 1000 trees from being felled by authorities who want to develop a fancy Village nature park ( palle Prakriti vanam ).

District authorities had descended on the land where the village women had raised some medicinal plants since two decades and preparations were made to cut the tall trees.

As the wood cutters appeared with the saw machines on the scene, the women staged dharna by hugging the trees and raising slogans and formed a human chain around their trees .

They were all members of the Dalitha Mahila Sangam of Ganjoti village .The women of the village say for years they had watered and fertilised the land and protected around 25 species of 1000 medicinal plants which had grown tall as trees now and yielding some medicinal produce .

The 52-year-old Onneti Bakkamma, a women leader said it was a barren land which nobody bothered two decades ago.With the support of Deccan Development Society, they took up tree plantation activity in early nineties and planted over 10,000 saplings of medicinal varieties.” I have raised them like my children. Now the trees are ten feet high and at a yielding stage, but government wants to cut them.

Begari Chukkamma, Karne Chandramma and others say that the village authorities want to create a fancy park Palle Prakriti Vanam ( village nature park), one of the lofty schemes of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao to promote parks in each Mandal ( tahsin) with a pathway for walkers etc .” We have green forests near by and greenery everywhere and we have no time to sit or walk in the park says Ulgeri Nagamma another women leader of the village. ” But who needs a nature park in a village ? “ asks environment activist and founder of DDS P V Satheesh. He says the operation to clear the grown up trees exposes the complicity of the Telangana government which aims to increase the amount of tree cover in the state from 24 to 33 per cent.

Obviously the government wants vacant land for political purposes, say activists, even at cost of environment.The authorities are clearing weeds, shrubs etc from all lands in district as part of drive to allocate vacant land to Political beneficiaries.

The village revenue authorities say that the government land left vacant earlier was used by these women to raise plants which is illegal. Now that the government wants to utilise it along with adjacent land, the women led by activists were raising hue and cry.

Revenue Inspector Shiva Kumar said as per the new program, the government wants to develop a Palle Prakruthi Vanam.( village nature park) “ We are not felling all trees, but only some unwanted shrubs etc that come in the way of uniform design provided by State forest department for promoting such facilities.” he says.

What all environmental experts and activists wonder is why not let these 1000 trees also survive and become part of the ambitious green Telangana program of the Chief Minister? But these seems to be a sea of gap between politics. Vision and the actual ground reality.

Telangana launched the Haritha Haram ( greenery ) scheme in 2016 with a budget of ₹550 crore. However, there is no account of how many crores of saplings planted since then have survived ? But the state has begun planting of 24.74 crore saplings from June last as part of sixth phase of the program.

The overall agenda is to plant 230 crore saplings of which 182 crore plantings have been done so far so far, says Telangana forest minister Indra Karan Reddy. But, activists say,  nobody has dared to question whether the planting crores of saplings at thousands of crores of public money has brought any dividends to society?

—INDIA NEWS STREAM

[contact-form][contact-field label=”Name” type=”name” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Website” type=”url” /][contact-field label=”Message” type=”textarea” /][/contact-form]