‘Plant a tree’ rule for newlyweds here
PRAYAGRAJ : Residents of a small village located around 24 km from the district headquarters of Kaushambi are attracting attention for their unique step aimed at eco-conservation.
Led by their present and former gram pradhans, all 3,700 residents of Amni Lokipur village of Mooratganj development block have resolved that every newly married couple of the village would henceforth enter their house only after planting the sapling of a shade and fruit giving tree, pledging nurture it as their ‘first child’.
The initiative has already started with the first couple who got married after the recent decision, planting a sapling and resolving to care for it like their first born. “Ours is a small village comprising of two majras or settlements ‘Amni’ and ‘Lokipur’ and together they form the Amni Lokipur Gram Panchayat. Over the years, our lush green village with a number of fruit and shade giving trees has lost much of its green cover as the size of farming fields and houses increased. However, now we all have resolved to make it green once again,” shared former gram pradhan of the village Swatantra Singh, 37. The ‘Nurture a tree like your first child’ initiative is Singh’s brainchild.
Singh said the need for the initiative was felt when most of the trees planted every year failed to reach maturity in the village owing to lack of proper care.
“So I gathered fellow villagers with the help of our newly elected Pradhan Lakhan Lal and explained to them the importance of trees in stablising the soil and keeping the farmlands fertile. As most residents are farmers in the village, everyone understood the importance of the plan and resolved that from now on every newlywed couple that comes to stay in the village would plant a tree and take care of it like their own child,” he explained.
“If by any chance the sapling dies, the couple will have to plant a new one and repeat the pledge, said Lakhan Lal, a marginal farmer of the village.
Atul, a 26-year-old farmer and his newlywed wife Sandhya, 23, planted the first sapling of a Peepal tree as part of the initiative on May 30. “We both planted the sapling and plan to look after it as long as we live,” said Atul.
June 16 and June 21 will witness a repeat of the ceremony that Atul and Sandhya undertook as two more youths of the village would get married, said Arvind Singh, 45, the secretary of the Amni Lokipur Gram Panchayat. The village has recently been adopted by the Prayagrajbased Red Eagle Division of the Indian army that has begun holding medical camps and training educated rural youths to work as nursing assistants in corona times.
On World Environment Day, the residents of the village along with the army personnel planted 100 trees, including 50 each in the local government-run primary school as well as junior high school of the village, said villagers. A serving army officer hailing from the village, Capt Sarvesh Kumar Tripathi said that the importance of the initiative was not just in the count of trees but the values that it would inculcate for planting, nurturing and protecting the trees in the young and the kids of the village who would inherit it in future.