ENGLISH SEA

Topic :- Environment Heroes

Made by :- Shreyam S. Saikia
 Jadav Payeng
◦ Jadav "Molai" Payeng (born 1963) is an environmentalist activist and forestry worker from Majuli, popularly known as
the Forest Man of India. Over the course of several decades, he has planted and tended trees on a sandbar of the river
Brahmaputra turning it into a forest reserve. The forest, called Molai Forest after him, is located near Kokilamukh of Jorhat,
Assam, India and encompasses an area of about 1,360 acres / 550 hectares. He was born in the indigenous Mising Tribe of
Assam.

◦ Jadav Payeng was honoured at a public function arranged by the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru
University on 22 April 2012 for his achievement. He shared his experience of creating a forest in an interactive session, where
Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh and JNU vice-chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory were present. Sopory named Jadav
Payeng as the "Forest Man of India". In the month of October 2013, he was honoured at the Indian Institute Of Forest
Management during their annual event Coalescence. In 2015, he was honoured with Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian
award in India. He received honorary doctorate degree from Assam Agricultural University and Kaziranga University for his
contributions.
 Rajendra Singh
◦ Rajendra Singh (born 6 August 1959) is an Indian water conservationists and environmentalist from Alwar
district, Rajasthan in India. Also known as "waterman of India", he won the Magsaysay Award in 2001 and Stockholm Water
Prize in 2015. He runs an NGO called 'Tarun Bharat Sangh' (TBS), which was founded in 1975. The NGO based in village
hori-Bhikampura in Thanagazi tehsil, near Sariska Tiger Reserve, has been instrumental in fighting the slow bureaucracy,
mining lobby and has helped villagers take charge of water management in their semi-arid area as it lies close to Thar Desert,
through the use of johad, rainwater storage tanks, check dams and other time-tested as well as path-breaking techniques.
Starting from a single village in 1985, over the years TBS helped build over 8,600 johads and other water conservation
structures to collect rainwater for the dry seasons, has brought water back to over 1,000 villages and revived five rivers in
Rajasthan, Arvari, Ruparel, Sarsa, Bhagani and Jahajwali. He is one of the members of the National Ganga River Basin
Authority (NGRBA) which was set up in 2009, by the Government of India as an empowered planning, financing, monitoring
and coordinating authority for the Ganges (Ganga), in exercise of the powers conferred under the Environment (Protection)
Act, 1986. In the UK he is a founder member of an NGO called the Flow Partnership . which aims to counter the negative
effects of soil erosion and flooding.
 Medha Patkar
◦ Medha Patkar (born 1 December 1954) is an Indian social activist working on various crucial political and economic issues raised
by tribals, dalits, farmers, labourers and women facing injustice in India. She is an alumnus of TISS, a premier institute of social science
research in India. Patkar is the founder member of the 32 years old people's movement called Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in three
states: Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. NBA has been engaged in a struggle for justice for the people affected by the dam
projects related to the Sardar Sarovar dam project, especially those whose homes will be submerged but have not yet been
rehabilitated. She is also one of the founders of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), an alliance of hundreds of
progressive people's organizations. In addition to the above, Patkar was a commissioner on the World Commission on Dams, which did
thorough research on the environmental, social, political and economic aspects and impacts of the development of large dams globally
and their alternatives. She was the national co-ordinator and then convenor of National Alliance of People's Movements for many years
and now continues to be an advisor to NAPM. Under the banner of NAPM, she has participated in and supported various mass struggles
across India against inequity, non-sustainability, displacement, and injustice in the name of development. Her work
challenges Casteism, Communalism, and all forms of discrimination. She has been a part of numerous teams and panels that work on
initiating and formulating various national policies and enactments including those related to land acquisition, unorganized sector
workers, hawkers, slum-dwellers and forest-dweller Adivasis. NAPM filed several public interest litigations including those against
Adarsh society, Lavasa Megacity, Hiranandani(Powai) and as well as other builders. Narmada Bachao Andolan and Ghar Bachao Ghar
Banao Andolan, founded by Medha Patkar with others are allies of NAPM.
 Marimuthu Yoganathan
◦ Marimuthu Yoganathan popular as The Tree Man (born 1969) is an Indian environmental activist . He planted over 1 lakh 20
thousand trees in the last 28 years. He is working as TNSTC Coimbatore Bus Conductor. When he was young he use to write
poems sitting under trees in Kotagiri forests. He fought with the timber mafia for felling trees. He works as a bus conductor
with Tamil Nadu govt on S-26, runs on the Marudamalai-Gandhipuram route in Coimbatore. He works with school children
and college students in creating the hazards of felling trees. He is a member of Tree Trust. He uses 40% of his monthly salary
towards buying saplings and educating children. He planted 4,20,000 tree saplings, by trekking the state of Tamil Nadu.
 Kinkri Devi
◦ Kinkri Devi (1925 – 30 December 2007) was an Indian activist and environmentalist, best known for waging a war on illegal
mining and quarrying in her native state of Himachal Pradesh. She never knew how to read or write and learned how to sign
her name a few years before her death. She became well known for her poverty, which was eventually eased by a US-based
charity organisation of Himachal Pradesh later in life after reading a Punjabi newspaper account of her living conditions. Devi
was born in the village of Ghaton in the Sirmaur district in 1925. Her father was a substinance farmer of the Dalit, or
untouchable caste. She began working as a servant during her early childhood and married bonded laborer Shamu Ram at age
14. Ram died of typhoid fever when she was 22. While working at her new job as a sweeper, Devi noticed the massive
quarrying in some parts of Himachal Pradesh's hills, harming the water supply and destroying paddy fields. At this point Devi
decided to take on the mining herself.
Thank You!!!