By H H Mohrmen
Planting trees after every World Environment Day (WED) is becoming a fashion nowadays. It looks as if the celebration will not be complete without planting trees. If we take into account the numbers of saplings planted since the first World Environment Day was celebrated, by now we would have planted millions of trees only in Meghalaya. But what happens after we have planted the trees? We move on to our next program and continue with our lives as usual and forget about the saplings altogether. In many cases animals eat up the unprotected sapling and it disappears a few days after the planter has left the place.
Celebration of WED is the in thing now; every institution from the government to educational institutes and even NGOs are now joining the bandwagon. But many a times the celebration (grand though it may be) becomes a mere formality where readymade audience are made available for the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister, other Ministers and dignitaries to speak to. At least Dr R C Laloo was honest enough to acknowledge the fact that students and teachers were his ever-present audience in any function in the district. It was the same situation in the recently held WED programme in Jowai. Had it not been for students and teachers, the pandal would have been empty. If we are to look at it from a different angle, we should ask ourselves why do we compel students to attend government functions? More importantly what did the students learn from the gathering that can compensate for what they have lost by way of classes.
Ultimately what do the kids learn from such gathering? Do kids come out wiser than they were before they entered the meeting? During WED functions one would expect the Chief Minister, the Deputy Chief Minister, the ministers would tell us about government policy to protect and preserve the environment, or we would at least expect the government to share with the audience the effort that it had taken to this effect, but that did not happen. In today’s context one would hope to hear the stand that the Government has taken vis-à-vis the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ban on rat-hole mining, but both the CM and DCM were silent on the issue.
We instead heard politicians lecturing the kids on something they have already learned from their environment classes or information that is available on the internet at the click of a mouse. One would expect original and practical ideas on environment protection and preservation that the kids can try at school or in their homes but nothing of that sort came from the gathering. At the end of the day the only things the kids enjoyed was the free lunch that was generously provided by the Forest Department or the District Administration.
Few years back we visited Khat-ar-nor Upper Primary School in Shangpung and learned a valuable lesson on how a school made the best use of the periods allotted for Socially Useful Productive Work (SUPW) classes. Heibormi Sungoh the headmaster of the school told us that during autumn they would ask the students to collect seeds from trees from the local forest and to keep it in the school. When Spring comes they would help teach the kids how the seeds germinate and when the saplings are old enough they would transplant the same in the school garden. The students were then asked to take care of their own plants throughout the year during SUPW period and students were allotted grades according to the healthy growth of the sapling. In the process they also made sure that only trees endemic to the area are being planted in the school campus. This is not only celebration of WED everyday but in the process it also helps the students to watch with awe how nature works. This to me is real education because the kids are learning from the mother of all teachers and that is Mother Nature.
A day after the WED on the sidelines of a workshop on Global and Indigenous: Connecting the Discourse organized by the IIM, Shillong, Pius Rani my new found friend A Social Work graduate, pulled me aside during tea break and shared one of the greatest ideas I had ever heard. Pius who is with the North East Slow Food Agro-biodiversity Society (NESFAS) told me about these kitchen gardens that they are promoting in the school which falls under the Laskein development block of West Jaintia hills. The background of the idea is based on the fact that the government supplies only rice to the schools to serve as midday meals for the children. The idea is to encourage schools and communities to start an organic kitchen garden in the school campus and in doing so, kids will not only have fresh and organically grown vegetables on their midday meal plates, but more importantly the vegetables will supplement their dietary needs and the fantastic idea actually complements the government’s midday meal scheme. And this can be done without the teacher or the students having to make any extra efforts, because the SUPW period can really be made meaningful and productive and to top it all the teachers and the students and even the community learn organic farming side by side. The idea will work even in schools in the urban areas where ground space is limited but the school’s rooftops can be used as a kitchen garden.
People are already beginning to talk about the fallout of the NGT but nothing says it louder than the common story carried by all the Shillong based English and vernacular papers about the family that had to sell their daughter to pay for their trip back home. The story really touched me and I wish it didn’t happen, but the question is, why did all the papers carry the same story and bring out the same photograph on World Environment Day? How can it be a coincidence that the same story and same photograph is carried by all papers? I am just curious to know how much it costs to travel to Assam and what was the price at which the girl was sold? And the most important question is why a girl child was sold and what about boys. The story also tells us so much about the heart of the coal mine owners who do not even have the heart to pay their workers the money to travel back home especially considering the circumstances that they are facing now.
I hope next time when the senior journalists from Shillong decide to take a trip to the coal mine areas and write a story, they would not just do roadside reporting. I would hope to read both sides of the story. I wish they would tell us about the condition of the water in the area and hope they will also make the effort to travel to the villages downstream of the dead rivers and tell us their stories too. And why not travel down to the Dimasa villages downstream of Kupli and tell us their stories too? Next time I hope to read more objective reporting and to hear both sides of the story. Or is this asking for too much from our senior journalist friends?