Moved by the hardships of famine he witnessed in his childhood days, Kaushal Kishore Jaiswal, a social worker from Palamu, has now dedicated his life to protect the environment and encourage others to recognise the need for it.
Jaiswal was in Ranchi on his journey to plant trees in five states, starting from Siwan in Bihar and ending at Uttar Kannad district of Karnataka, to commemorate the 47th anniversary of his environment-saving revolution.
Coming from the arid district of Palamu, Jaiswal believes environmental crisis to be one of the biggest problems in world today, which can be countered only by planting trees.
“A serious food shortage ravaged the then undivided Bihar in 1966. Sustenance was hard to come by. During this phase, I heard my father talking to the villagers that this calamity was caused due to trees being felled. learning from this, I decided that I will not allow any forests to be cut down,” Jaiswal recounted.
Acting on this decision, he planted trees on his land sprawled over 7.72 acres at his ancestral village Dali in Chhatarpur Block of Palamu in 1968. Along with it, Jaiswal encouraged farmers of his village to plant trees, but they had reservations about it.
“In the beginning, the farmers were apprehensive of turning their farmlands into forests as the government can assert claims to their lands. I had to convince them that planting trees will create assets for them in the form of forest resources,” Jaiswal said.
In 1970, Jaiswal started the Vanrakhi Movement in a bid to make environment protection appeal to the religious nature of people. “Forests cannot be protected with force alone. The objective of environment protection will be difficult to achieve unless it is joined with religion,” he said.
Jaiswal has also worked alongwith well-known environmentalist Sunder lal Bahuguna during Chipko Movement and later in Appiko Movement. The movement he started from his native place has now spread to 18 states of India and beyond national boundaries to Nepal and Bhutan. In his 47 years of service to the nature, Jaiswal has never taken any aid from either the government or non-government organisations. Family has supported me in my endeavours; apart from that, no one came forward to help nor I asked for any help, he said.