Crusader 3.5 lakh trees away from 10-lakh target
Chandra Bhushan Tiwari began his mission in 2006, planted one lakh saplings by 2010
LUCKNOW: Chandra Bhushan Tiwari, 53, claims he is 3.5 lakh trees away from his life’s mission of planting 10 lakh saplings.
In nearly 15 years since he planted the first of these saplings, he says there’s been a sea change in the attitude of the people and governments towards increasing the green cover.
“My whole movement is based on public and government cooperation. I have no livelihood or earnings of my own. People provide money or saplings and government organisations or individuals invite or allow me to plant saplings on their premises,” says Chandra Bhushan.
He says that he planted his first set of 45 saplings on the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) fire station premises on January 26, 2006.
“The original target was one lakh, which I accomplished in four years by 2010. It spurred me
to scale up the target to 10 lakh,” he says. Tiwari plants only such trees whose leaves, fruits, flowers are edible, generally guava, mango, neem, jackfruit, jamun , bel or lemon trees.
“Lucknow Model Jail has 350 of my trees, Nari Bandi Niketan 300 and Sampoornanand jail training institute 250. I have done plantations at many temples, mosques, burial-cremation grounds, streets, parks and no
man’s land,” he says.
He had a central government job as a Hindi teacher in Kendriya Vidyalaya, but quit soon after he got employment in 1994 because many of the underprivileged children, who he used to teach for free before taking up the school job, complained that they were missing his guidance. He now runs four free-of-cost thatched-roof schools in Lucknow. Although most of the trees he planted are in Lucknow, there are also some in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and other districts of UP.
Chandra Bhushan says: “Earlier, I used to move about on a bicycle, then on a motorcycle planting trees, distributing saplings, and taking care of them. But now I have a second-hand van which I bought for Rs 3 lakh for which my 300 contributors gave Rs 1,000 each. Apart from this, these 300 contribute between Rs 100 and Rs 200 each month for my environment and education endeavours.”
The van has green messages pasted all over it and plays songs about the environment that Chandra Bhushan has penned.
“When I give saplings to people, I say: This is my daughter and I am giving her in KanyaDaan. Take care of her for two years, and then she will take care of us all her life.”
“I chose to be jobless. My wife Sushila is a professor at a college,” he says. The family has a 650 square feet residential plot in Aashiana where it has a house. The entire unconstructed area of the plot and the terrace have a vegetable garden. “We are self-sufficient in vegetables,” says Chandra Bhushan.