Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Planting trees, not using air conditioners, keeping water for birds, distributing cloth bags, promoting eco-friendly fuels - many residents from the city have been making efforts at an individual level to save the environment. They have limited resources but unlimited passion.
On the eve of World Environment Day, the Free Press talked with some of them. Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience’ is theme of this year with slogan ‘Our Land, Our Future’.
Excerpts:
Gau Kasth for cremations
Known as the Gau Kasth Man of India, Dr Yogendra Kumar Saxena (50), a Scientist C at Central Pollution Control Board’s Bhopal regional office, is widely credited with promoting the use of Gau Kashth (logs made by compressing cow dung) for funerals and in Holika Dahan in the city. “I got the idea of using Gau Kasth for funerals after performing my father’s last rites at Gwalior,” says Saxena, adding that he had seen a mixture of cow dung cakes and wood being used for cremation in Vidisha. The calorific value of Gau Kasth is almost equal to that of wood and it causes nearly 35% less pollution than wood, besides saving trees, he says. “While it is important to plant trees, it is even more important to save existing trees from being hacked,” he says. He is now working on rejuvenating Palakmati, a small river in the Hoshangabad district of the state. “I have adopted the river,” he says with pride.
Friend of the trees
Planting trees is a passion for Sunil Dubey, who retired from the PHE department of the state government in 2021. He has been planting trees since 2008 and has, so far, planned 3.43 lakh trees in Bhopal and in different cities of the state. He turned a barren patch of land in Kaliasot green by planting 400 fruit-bearing and wild plants on it. Known as Vriksha Mitra (a friend of trees), Dubey says that the indoor temperature in his house in Suruchi Nagar in the Kotra Sultanabad area is about 10 degrees celsius lower than the temperature at other places in the city. “That is mainly because of the large number of trees planted by me in the area around my house,” he says. He doesn’t use a cooler or an AC, has a 3.5KW solar power plant installed on the roof of his house and travels on an e-scooter. “I use my entire pension amount on my passion. The household expenses are met from my wife’s pension,” he says
Water for stray animals, birds
Sixty-two-year-old Mridula Tyagi, a former senior manager with the United India Insurance Company Limited lives near Kamla Park. For the past two years, almost every other morning during the summers, along with her friend Sudha Dubey, she loads cans of water in her car and sets off to refill the clay utensils she has placed at different locations around her house. “Stray animals and birds need water to survive and in the summers, they can’t find it anywhere,” she explains. In fact, she has been feeding birds for the past 20 years. “I spread some grains on the ground, keep a vessel of water nearby and it is so exhilarating to see chirping birds landing in droves,” she says.
