Afforestation By The Bank

Once an urbanite went to a village in a remote place. Early morning, he came out on the street for a walk. It was a pleasant morning. But something struck him. He was smelling something strange, something very good but never experienced. A farmer was passing by. The urbanite inquired about the strange thing he was smelling. The farmer stared at the guest, laughed & said "Dear sir, it is fresh air".

The story needs no comment. The 20th century saw tremendous development. In fact, the speed of development was much more than that of previous centuries. Of course, the century also saw two world wars & the destruction by the atom bombs. The progress in the 21st century is also tremendous. As a result of this development, there are certain side effects.

There is a problem of global warming. Many species of plants & animals are on the verge of becoming extinct, biodiversity is lost. There is reduction in the percentage of CO2. Population of world is out of control, water scarcity haunts us, cities, townships, even many villages have to encounter pollution at its peak. There is tremendous environmental imbalance.

In the name of progress & development, the human beings have exploited the mother earth. The human ego with the tool of "explore & exploit" tried to establish the superiority of man over the nature & eventually brought us to this situation of disaster. We did not realize when our ego got transformed into greed. We forgot that earth is our mother earth & not a lady to be conquered. We forgot the principle of co-existence. We have to live with the nature & nature is our creator.

Experts think that 33% of the land in India must have forest on it. But only 21-22% land is under forest. The state Government is trying hard to achieve the goal before 2012.

Some NGOs are working to create awareness among the people about this problem. NGOs, corporates, forest department & other government departments, alongwith the people must come together to fight this global problem of imbalance of environment.

The Kalyan Janata Sahakari Bank is a financial organization, which believes in social obligation As a leading a financial organization in Kalyan, the bank is instrumental in assisting social work. Shri. W. D. Sathe, a founder director of the bank thought that the co-operative banks should jointly take Afforestation programme (Vanikaran), by entering into a tri-partite agreement.

There is a concept of public private partnership. In view of this concept, the forest department has a scheme, where in 3 institutes, the forest department, a corporate body & an NGO would jointly take up a Afforestation programme by entering into a tri-partitite agreement. Shri. W. D. Sathe made proposal to the forest department in which he strongly advocated for inclusion of a co-operative bank, in this scheme. He tried very hard. Fortunately, ex. MLC Dr. Ashok Modak, then Secretary of forest department Mrs. Nila Satyanarayan helped him & the scheme got through.

The Kalyan Janata Sahakari Bank, The Sanchalak Samajseva Puraskar Nidhi & Forest department of Government of Maharashtra entered into a tri-partite agreement on 17th May 2007. A similar tri-part agreement was done by The Thane Bharat Sahakari Bank on the same day. By this agreement, 25 acres of forest land at Maskal village on the bank of Kalu river, near Titavala was given on lease for 7 years to each bank.

Immediately after the tri agreement, a retired forest officer Shri. Anil Thakre was appointed as a consultant. He prepared a plan to plant 10,000 trees on this land, during first 5 years In July 2007, 500 trees were planted for each bank by senior citizens, ladies, the Directors & Employees of the bank & villagers from Maskal & Runde also participated in this programme.

On July 11, 2007, the Chief Conservator Shri. Shri. Bhagavan, the Deputy Conservator Shri. Bhaskarrao Walimbe, Deputy Director, Social Forestry Department Shri. Kishore Thakre & Taluka Panchayat Committee Chairperson Mrs. Madhuri Walimbe offered their blessings by actively participating in the programme. They together planted about 35 trees of various species such as banayan, pimpal, etc.

During the period from Jan. 2008 to March 2009, 1500 saplings were planted. The main problem was watering the trees. A submersible pump was installed on the Kalu river. This time, the Mahindra Lifespaces Developers Ltd. was kind enough to offer financial support. The General Manager of the company is a Kalyanite & a Rotarian. The employees of the company, the Rotarians of Kalyan township sincerely participated in this noble activity.

We have invited the members, well wishers of the Kalyan Janata Sahakari Bank, the Kalyanites to contribute to this project. To facilitate this, we have arranged two special buses on 23rd & 24th March 2008 to take interested persons from Titwala Railway Station to the project venue. People's response was spontaneous. During the two days about 250 persons planted around 650 trees.

Tree plantation programme for the year 2008 was to be carried out in two phases. In the 1st phase upto 31st March 2008, each bank has to plant 1500 trees & to dig 2500 pits. In the 2nd phase actual planting of 2500 saplings was to be executed. Accordingly, the Bank celebrated the week from 22nd June2008 to 29th June 2008 as 'Vanikarn Week'

During this week, some teams of traders from Kalyan had visited the site & they participated in the programme with enthusiasm. Various social organization Homeguards, the employees of the Bank made this week memorable by their active participation.

Celebrities & leaders naturally could not remain behind. Deputy Mayar Shri. Narendra Pawar, former standing committee chairman Shri. Rajendra Devalekar, Zilla Parishad chairperson Mrs. Rekhatai Pashte & many others lauded the project by their active involvement.

Another interesting feature was the unique 'Vata Pournima Celebration'. Hindhu ladies worship the Vata - the banayan tree on full moon (Pournima) day of Hindhu calendar month Jyestha to honour Savitri, the mythylogical lady who by her sheer brilliance & determination fought with the yamaraj - the God of death to save her husband Satyavan's life. This episode took place beneath a Banayan Tree & so the vata is worshiped.

On 18th June 2008, about 120 ladies gathered at the site & celebrated the 'Vata Pournima' by planting 120 Vat or Banayan trees.

M/s. Mahindra Lifespaces P. Ltd. and M/s. Johnson & Johnson Ltd. offered financial support to this project. J&J supported financial assistance to plant 1000 trees per year for 3 years. Last year 500 saplings were planted. Amongst these, Eucalyptus, Aceshia & Pine were in majority. In the year 2008, trees of more than 50 species such as Banayan, Myrobalan (Amala) were planted. In the year 2009 around 1500 saplings were planted.

The salient feature of this project is 'NAKSHATRA WAN". There are 27 Nakshatras and 1/2 trees are assigned to each Nakshtra. In our project 1 acre of land is reserved for Nakshtra Wan. 27 sectors in a circle admeasuring 1 acre will be formed and in each sector trees assigned to different Nakshatras will be planted. We will invite celebrities to plant these trees. They would plant the trees according to their own Rashi / Nakshatra.

We are planning to plant 10,000 trees during the period of 5 years. So far 7000 trees are planted.

The Thane Bharat Sahakari Bank Ltd. has also undertaken such a project and they have planted 5500 trees so far. Because of the enthusiasm shown by our employees, our shareholders and the general public of Kalyan and vicinity, we are happy that we are ahead the schedule.

This project is in fact only one aspect of the battle against the problem of Global Warming. It is necessary to create awareness amongst general public about the danger of imbalanced environment. We wish to invite students at a sight to make them aware of this threat. The training programmes for the shareholders and well-wishers of the Bank and the citizens of Kalyan will be also organized to create awareness about this problem among them.

Today almost all the saplings have grown up to 3-4 ft. We hope that they will grow into big trees by the end of 2011 and the sight on the river-bank will then become a Green Zone. The sight will become a beautiful place to visit.

The concept, planning & execution of this project could be done successfully by many people but, the inspiration behind this was the determination and tremendous will power of our senior Director, Shri Wamanrao Sathe. In fact, he was instrumental in making this a great success. Retired Forest Officer, Shri Anil Thakare is Consultant to this project. His in sight sincerity and hard work is commendable. Our employees Shri Shyam Chavan and Shri Bhagwas Gaikwad took this project as their own and worked there without any expectations.

M/s. Mahindra Lifespaces and M/s. Johnson & Johnson and the officers and employees of Forest Department, employees of our Bank, various social organizations in Kalyan and Titwala, the villagers of Runde & Mhaskal and many more have contributed substantially to the success of this project.

Krupadham Ashramites had worked for the project as if it was their own project. We express gratitude to them all.

This project is successful because of the blessings of Siddhivinayak Ganesha of Titwala and also Shankar Maharaj of Krupadham.

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