Van Mahotsav is a weekly festival celebrated in India during the month of July. This celebration was started in 1950 by the then Union Minister for Agriculture and Food Dr. K. M Munshi. The festival is usually observed between 1st July to 7th July. This month marks the onset of monsoon in various parts of the country. Hence, planting saplings during this season increases the chances of plant survival.
The week long festival was initiated with a motive to spread awareness about the concerns of deforestation and promote afforestation at the same time.
Objectives of Van Mahotsav as visualized by Dr KM Munshi are as follows:
- Providing alternative options for fuel
- Providing fodder leaves for cattle to relieve the intensity of grazing over reserved forests
- Increasing production of fruits, which could be added to the potential food resources of the country
- Creating shelter-belts around agricultural fields to increase their productivity
- To augment soil conservation and prevent further deterioration of soil fertility
During the course of these 7 days, several plantation drives are witnessed across the country. With the participation of large number people, millions of saplings are planted.
In a recent interview with Discover East, Forest Officer, Guwahati Social Forestry, Jayanta Deka showed concerned over plantation drives not serving the purpose.
“Many organizations and insitutions ask saplings from us for different occasions. Most of the time, they take the saplings, take some photos while distributing the saplings and that’s it”, Deka added. Read more.
Urging people to plant trees, he said, “I want to appeal to the people that if you are giving or receiving a sapling, then at least make sure it’s planted. It is meant to be planted. Otherwise there is no point of it.”
With a similar motive in mind to encourage plantation, a Guwahati based community The FERNS Society (TFS) distributed 300 saplings of various plants to Assam Police personnel and public and planted around 60 more in various schools in Guwahati last month.
To ensure that the saplings are not wasted, the team took the effort to ask each of the recipients if they were willing to rear a plant. Some of the people expressed that they didn’t have the space to plant at their residences or enough time to take care of a sapling. They encouraged to either plant the sapling at their workplaces or gift it to someone who has space. Read more.
Initiatives like this are currently the need of the hour. Conservation of forests, environment and biodiversity are some of the major issues that needs to be dealt with.
Also read this article about few easy steps that everyone can take to save environment.
(Feature image source: Treesisters)
