THE SOUL OF THE BUSINESS
A PRIVATE   FAITH MADE DANGEROUSLY PUBLIC 
The Making of a Paper
 By SHOMA CHAUDHURY
 In Gratitude
 By TARUN J TEJPAL

There is little to set Sachchidanand Bharti apart from others in the village of Ufrain Khal, and it is only when he greets us with a rose and a warm hug that we realise that this unassuming man is the person we have come to meet. As we look out over the valley beyond, the hills around us reflect his extraordinary achievement — with no financial assistance apart from the contributions of villagers, Bharti has transformed large parts of the once-denuded Dudhatoli range in Uttarakhand’s Pauri district into the best and thickest forests in the state.

Ever since the 1960s, unrestricted industrialisation has made large tracts of the mountains mere warehouses for natural resources, exported to the plains. In the 1970s, grassroots protest against the destruction of the forests famously found its most visible expression in the Chipko struggle, which began in Gopeshwar in Chamoli district. Bharti was then in college in Gopeshwar and was an active participant in the movement, even forming a college group called Daliyon Ka Dagda (Friends of the Trees) to spread the word on conservation. After his studies, when he returned to Ufrain Khal, he found the same sorry tale of destruction there as well. “Around that time, the forest department decided to cut down a stretch of silver firs near Dera village. Coming from the Chipko movement, I knew how to tackle this and I started a campaign and mobilised the villagers,” says Bharti. Thanks to his efforts, hundreds of firs were saved from the official axe — a small success which laid the foundation for big changes and, most importantly, helped give the people of the area a sense of their rights and the importance of unity.

Sunrise in Pauri: Overlooking one of the Dudhatoli Lok Vikas Sansthan plantations

Old-timers in the mountains speak of how the forests were once sufficient to provide both for the wild animals that lived in them as well as for the villages dependent on them for fuel and food. But, as deforestation spread out of control, not only did the villagers have to deal with severe resource scarcities, but the animals of the forests became a menace, driven by the vanishing tree cover toward human habitation. Instead of killing the animals off, as happened elsewhere, villagers in Dera began building walls around their fields and settlements, on Bharti’s suggestion. The wall that was begun in 1980, with money pooled in by villagers not only from Dera but from other villages too, is 9 km long today, and the project has been replicated elsewhere as well. Around this time, Bharti also took up teaching at a local school. His long-time friend and doctor, Dinesh, says this was the single-most important reason for the success his projects later had as he was able to reach out directly to the young with his conservationist message.

By the late 1970s, the deforestation problem had sufficiently alarmed the government to spur it to official action — they began planting pine trees in empty patches in reserved forests. This, Bharti says, was disastrous. “Pine forests reduce moisture levels, and that, together with the trees’ highly resinous content, leads to forest fires. Besides, they don’t grip the soil well and are poor protection against landslides,” he explains. In 1980, Bharti tried a different approach. With the help of the forest department, he established a nursery of indigenous mountain species — oak, fir, cedar and alder. This effort later grew into the Dudhatoli Lok Vikas Sansthan (dlvs), which undertakes indigenous tree plantation across the range and holds annual environmental awareness camps in the 150 villages that are part of it From the first, the dlvs has also been a tremendous tool for women’s empowerment — left to manage home and field as the men migrate for work to the plains, it is the women who bear the brunt of the resource scarcity around them. To encourage their participation, Bharti formed Mahila Mangal Dals in every village he worked with, and entrusted them with taking up their own part in securing their future. After the first plantation drive, the villagers who took part made a collective decision to enforce a 10-year ban on forest activity. Through the Mahila Mangal Dals, it was the women who took on the task of posting a lookout for trespassers, with patrols working in shifts to keep the vigil.

His Woods, His Work: Sachchidanand Bharti

Within a decade, the people of Dudhatoli regained a large part of their lost forest cover. Bharti says with pride that the villagers have not spent more than Rs 6 -7 lakh on planting entire forests over 27 years. After initial help with the first nursery, the dlvs has never asked for any assistance from the government. Instead, it funds itself through a corpus created from the sale of saplings grown in its nurseries. Bharti in fact is critical of the government’s role in conservation in the hills. “Reserving forests meant that mountain people were severely restricted from accessing their woods,” he says, “But, when money changed hands, the very same rules were flouted openly by the forest officials in cahoots with greedy contractors.”

Rripple Effect: Some 12,000 water bodies have been rejuvenated

Bharti says with pride that the villagers have not spent more than Rs 6-7 lakh on planting entire forests over 27 years

In 1987, the entire range went through a severe drought. Worried, the dlvs decided to dig a small pit near every tree, so water could collect and allow them to survive a few months longer. At this time, Bharti came into contact with Anupam Mishra of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, who provided him with knowhow on the making and maintenance of small-scale water bodies. Bharti turned the principles to meet local requirements and, with the dlvs, began to resuscitate old, dried-up water bodies and create several new ones. Twelve thousand such ponds, big and small, now bring water to about 40 villages. Satish Chandra Nautiyal of Simkoli village points to a small well by his house that Bharti helped build in 2005; this well, he says, is now the basis of the entire village’s existence.

As we say goodbye to Bharti, the faces of his long-standing friends, Deendayal Dhondiyal, a postman, and Vikram Negi, a local grocer, are full of quiet pride. “Stopping the deforestation was just a small step,” says Negi. “The real challenge lay in restoring the lost beauty of the mountains.” Bharti and the dlvs need be in no doubt that they’ve met that challenge well.