Anupam Mishra

Collective community efforts can help overcome the vagaries of nature and rejuvenate pastures and farms to restore prosperity, says Dr Anupam Mishra in his booklet outlining a case study of Lapodia, a village in Rajasthan. 

The year is 2004. Lapodia is facing another rainless year, one of a cycle of six consecutive years of drought. But unlike other villages in its vicinity, it has managed to conserve its greenery. Lapodia has achieved the impossible by going back to its hoary roots, and nurturing age-old practices.

Anupam Mishra is an environmental activist and currently works with the Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi. The inspiring contribution dealing with the indigenous water systems of central India has been translated by Nirupama Adhikari into Bengali.

 The second edition of the book came out in 2008 just after the devastating Bihar floods in the year when the river thundered down from the Himalayas on its way to the sea sweeping half of Bihar.

Source: NDTV

Author: Anupam Mishra

"The water in springs of my hills is cool, Do not migrate from this land o my beloved.”

Ek Phirangi Raja

In this essay, Romesh Bedi recounts the true story of Frederick E Wilson, a British army officer, who deserted the army after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1957, escaped to the Himalayas, and settled in Harsil, a remote village in Uttarakhand on the banks of the Bhagirathi.

Wilson makes a flourishing business from the export of skins, fur, musk from the region, and rips the local deodar forest, to cash in the growing demand for wooden sleepers during the expansion of the Indian railways by the British, which were sent down to the plains through the rivers. Wilson soon acquires a lease from the Raja of Tehri-Garhwal, for his timber business and keeps the Raja happy by giving him a share of the profits, and even begins to mint his own local currency, because of which locals start calling him Raja.