Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged infrastructure ministries to stop cutting trees when clearing land for projects and transplant them instead, a practice he tried in Gujarat as chief minister. According to highways and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari, Modi first got the idea from watching television. “The PM told me: I was watching TV once and Discovery channel was showing how a tree is transplanted. I immediately checked up the details and got a Canadian company which was doing this to send two machines to Gujarat,“ Gadkari cited Modi as having said at the time of his ministrys presenta tion to the PM on its plans and priorities. “Nitin, if we can do this, it will be great as killing trees is not a good thing. I am very sensitive about the environment,“ the PM told Gadkari, referring to the transplantation strategy implemented by the Gujarat government when he was chief minister. Gadkari said the ministry has decided that from now on, “We wont cut trees, we will transplant them. We are talking to Indian companies as well as the Canadian company (that worked in Gujarat), which is making a presentation in the next 8-10 days,“ the minister said. In a separate green initiative, the NDA government has also decided to include tree plantations under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). “We have made a scheme based on the idea `Ek ped, ek gaay , ek pariwar (One tree, one cow, one family),“ said Gadkari, who as rural development minister also administers MGRNEGS. “In Ratnagiri, every alphonso tree gives an income of Rs 50,000 a year. So NREGA families can also benefit if we give them some trees. We have formulated a scheme to do this at a large scale,“ the minister said
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 05:13:08 +0000
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