This journey in terms of experience has started very early in my life because I've always

been outdoors and I have a certain sense of land. So my engagement with this has been very long

term but action orientedness came in the from 1998. On that year some UN agencies came to

Tamil Nadu and made a prediction that by 2025 60% of Tamil Nadu will be facing desertification.

So when I looked at this I did not believe it first of all so I decided to drive around Tamil

Nadu and see for myself. Then I saw what they were saying was incorrect because in my experience I

felt it will happen well before 2025 because three perennial rivers had dried up in Tamil Nadu.

When I saw this I thought we need to do something so at that time the average green cover across

Tamil Nadu was 16.5%. The national aspiration was 33%. So I said we need to get this to 33%. What does

it take? I made a simple barefoot calculation. I called a group of our volunteers and said

we need to plant 114 million trees. They thought I've gone crazy because such a group 114

million trees who can plant this? I asked what is your population? They said 62 million. See if all

of us plant one tree. Take care of it for two years and plant one more tree. You got the number.

Why is it that it can't be done? Simply because all of us are consuming but all of us are not willing

to do the compensatory work. That's the whole thing. So based on this we started a moment called

project green hands which planted millions of trees still continuing to do that and we converted

a few over 120,000 farmers into tree-based agriculture where we saw significant improvement in the

soil quality in the nutritional values of the food and above all for the farmer it is an economic

process because in seven to eight years time his income is going up anywhere between 300 to 800%.

I come across a rally for reverse and a very calling campaign. I planted almost

2000 saplings of six different varieties of high-value timber trees in my farm line. In 15 to 20 years

down the line it will fetch me about 8 to 10 crore rupees income. So my future is fixed.

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