Students for trees - Govt's School Nursery Yojana

Students for trees - Gov't Launches School Nursery Yojana

The Government has launched the School Nursery Yojana under which nurseries will be created in schools where students will be involved in raising the saplings.

The main objective of the School Nursery Yojana is to create an everlasting bond between the young students and plants and trees. The students will sow seeds, grow saplings in the school nursery, as a part of practical exercise for Biology classes and extra-curricular activities for students of other streams. The students will also carry out a tree census in their school and the locality.

A school Nursery will have a small space of a minimum of 100 sq meter for preparing beds for raising saplings and for nursery-related activities, including preparing, planting a mixture of good earth, soil and manure, filling earthen pots and storage of seeds. Each School Nursery is expected to create a 1,000 saplings every year. The schools will be encouraged to take up composting, rain water harvesting and water recycling to inculcate best practices in young minds. Through the School Nursery Yojana, the Ministry will support schools to provide all the essential facilities for raising of saplings for use of students and schools.

In an event to commemorate the launch of this programme, Shri Javadekar, Minister of State for MoEF&CC said that there can be no better combination than that of students and trees. Shri Javadekar said that the Yojana is being launched in 1,000 schools this year. ‘It will be expanded to cover around 5,000 schools next year and to about 10,000 schools in the third year’, he said.

More than sixty participating schools received saplings of their choice from a wide range of species including medicinal plants. Some of the species of saplings distributed to the students include – ‘Neem’, ‘Jamun’, ‘Amaltas’, ‘Kachnar’, ‘Bahera’, ‘Amla’ and ‘Bigonia’. Some of the herbal plants that were distributed include – ‘Tulsi’, ‘Lemon Grass’, ‘Giloi’, ‘Ashwagandha’, ‘Haldi’ and ‘Ilaichi’. A packet of seeds too was given to students, which included species such as ‘Kachnar’, ‘Papdi’, ‘Kaner’, ‘Neem’ and ‘Bigonia’. Around 5,000 saplings were distributed to school students and some nearby residents.

Given the large number of students in each school, if each student were to plant a tree, then there won’t be space in the schools. Hence the Government should also allow planting of trees in revenue lands and allow people to water and tend to the saplings without any claims to the land. Each school can be earmarked a patch of land so that the students can then engage in the tree planting activities.

Students may also be taught to plant the flowering and medicinal plants in their terrace gardens.

This move will be good in generating awareness. However, we also have to move beyond the superficial level of knowledge of “tree planting is good” and need to explain the importance of planting indigenous tree species native to each locality. The students need to be explained that one can plant a tree but cannot create a forest. The intricate relationship between various species of trees needs to be explained.

Hopefully we can avoid the monoculture plantations that we see in many parts of the country.