Srijan Foundation

This is report sent by Mr. Rahul Saxena of Lok Vigyan Kendra (LVK), Himacha Pradesh. Srijan Foundation is supporting a project in which LVK runs in the Chamba District, for reviving medicinal plants and thus creating self-sustenance through forest produce.

There is a Presentation attached.

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Dear Friends,

After a long delay, we are sending you the report of the forest management effort that many of you had supported (the list of donors is given at the end of this report). We thank you all for all the support that was extended to this initiative; without it things would just not have been possible. The team at Lok Vigyan Kendra wants to express heart felt appreciation of the spirit of philanthropy that the appeal was able to mobilize – even from people who did not know us previously.

First, the reason for the delay in posting this report – we wanted you to see images of the village that took up the forest management initiative and the area that got restocked with the medicinal herbs (see the attached power point presentation). We did not have a camera at the time the plantation activity was undertaken and hence no images of the herbs being planted. The images that I am sending to you have been recently taken when a team member had gone there to have the people loosen the ground around the herbs for better growth of the roots (the harvestable part).

We had planned to take up the plantation activity in two villages this season – Kut Batoa and Mahua. The area to be planted in Mahua was a much drier one (it is a patch of grassland) than the one in Kut Batoa (an oak forest with plenty of undergrowth). Kut Batoa incidentally also had a drier patch ready for plantation which was to be planted with the same herb(Heracleum specie) as the patch in Mahua. Since, the rains arrived late in this region, almost all the able bodied men from Mahua had crossed over the high Pir Panjal mountains to Lahul region for the collection of commercial herbs, similar to those that this initiative is trying to rehabilitate in their own forests. We could not take up any plantation activity in the Mahua village this summer – that shall have to be done during the coming winters. Luckily, there were a few people still remaining in Kut Biota who gathered the herbs (Valerian specie) from far away areas and planted them in the Oak forest, adjacent to the plot that had been planted last year with the same herb. In all 100 Kgs of Valerian plants were utilized by the villagers for the plantations. This roughly translates to around 9000 to 10,000 plants in total. Since the full grown roots do not occupy a large area, not much digging is involved in the planting exercise and around a hectare of area was planted with the herbs.

Two months later, the herbs have shown an excellent survival ratio with a more than 90 % plants surviving, a factor that had inspired the villagers of Kut – Batoa (and some other adjoining villages) to undertake similar efforts this year. We are planning to expand the initiative to these villages to create a visible impact and hopefully influence government functioning. We hope to get your continued support this year too.

If you are interested to know more about our other activities, please write back.

With warm regards

Rahul Saxena,
Lok Vigyan Kendra,
Chanakyapuri Colony,
Ghuggar Nala Road,
Palampur, District Kangra,
Himachal Pradesh.
Tel : 098160-25246

The details of the expenses made from the donated money is as follows:

Total donations received Rs. 53,100

Expenses

Cost of planting by the local villagers Rs. 8,540

Travel and honorarium for Rs. 5,205

meetings and supervision

Cost of planting material to villagers Rs. 900

Total expenses Rs. 14,645

Funds carried over for plantations in Rs. 38,455

winter in Kut Batoa and Mahua

The list of donors is as follows:

Name	Amount
Sandeep Narang	5000
Radhika Johari	3500
Prashant Varma	1000
Huang Mengchi	500
Jaya Iyer	250
Dr. M.B.Athreya	2000
Florence Koh	2000
Roopak Malik	2000
Neelima Sheikh	5000
Kanchi Kohli	1000
Varun Rattan Singh	100
Pooja Chauhan	5000
Jaya Iyer	250
Uma Singh	5000
Rahul Dewan	10000
Srijan Foundation Trust	10000
Soumya, Malathi and Manthan	500
Total	53100

Project Presentation – Charda, Chamba, Himachal Pradesh (PPT)

There is an extremely inspiring article in the Indian Express (Sunday Edition) today titled “From Sir With Love” (http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/260332.html) on the inspiration behind the movie, Amole Gupte, who has drawn from instances in his life to write the script of the movie Taare Zameen Par.

Aamir Khan has played the role of Gupte’s real life art teacher Ramdas Sampat Nikumbh. Gupte, unlike Isham Nandraj Awasthi, was a brilliant student at school always coming out a winner; and like the character loved to paint but was battered by pushy parents and our blind education system. “As a kid, once you start winning, you are doomed to repeat the success”, he says.

Gupte goes on to point something very important about how the human society is engrossed in this maddening competition. He says, “If a kid is hyperactive at home because of a decline in playing spaces outside in our urban areas, it’s not a problem. Animals accept their offspring as they are. A tribal father in a jungle will accept the way his kid is; he isn’t bothered about his kid’s pace of climbing a tree, but we always seem to be judging. Even in an art workshop, parents say, ‘Why is your tree not perfect?’ ‘Why are the walls of your house not straight like the others? …’ It’s a pity that we have stopped finding the beauty in the ordinary. Now we have no allowance for deviance”.

This is a very significant point. All parents want their children to study hard and become first-graders, cut-off admission percentages in most Delhi colleges for decent courses is now in the range of 90% and above, schools are now not education children in readying them for life but rather readying them for the IITs and top-notch colleges.

There is a certain kind of sadness about this whole thing; this endless race to become the best. There can be only one winner in a 100-meter race, and we all want our children to be this winner. Yet life is not about 100-meter races; it is a long-marathon, just to make an inept sort of comparison, between running and life.

Yet this marathon of life has all winners. There are no losers. For what becomes of a so-called winner in this world? He still becomes old, even after accumulating extraordinary amounts of wealth, which he can not spend in seven lifetimes, and eventually dies, and gets buried or burnt depending upon the region and religion he was born in.

During the lifetime ofcourse, life would have been quite comfortable. This can be the only argument. It can also be argued that we should pursue and enjoy material gains because what else is there in life. Enjoyment is fine, but greed is probably not. It does not get us where we say we want to go as an overall race and as a society.

The race for being numero uno is all about greed. It is untrue if it argued that it is about being good at what you do. Had that been the case, parents would have encouraged children in our society to identify their core in-born interests and groomed them to pursue these interests.

Our whole system of parenting, bringing up, education, etc. is so entrenched in “me becoming better than the other“, that you create insecurity in children, and then try have them see security in studying better and making something from their lives. There is an extraordinary sense of sadness in this whole structure.

The Waldorf Schools are an excellent break from this sick education system, and the competitive madness. There have been experimental schools in India as well, although my guess is they are few, and not in the mainstream.

This is why, Taare Zameen Par, is such a relief. As Gupte aptly puts it, “The reactions, especially of fathers, surprised me. That people are coming out of the theatres with wet handkerchiefs shows that the heart of the nation is in place. The success of the film strengthens that hope.”