Shalini Sabikhi

The importance of teaching children green practices is by now common knowledge. But a few sermons on conserving the environment and planting a few trees every now and then is not enough. We have to get children into the practice of constantly thinking in terms of conserving and preserving the environment. Here are a few suggestions that you too can use to constantly engage children with the idea of waste management, recycling, and conserving the environment.

Nimesh Ved A recent trip to Rishi Valley School (Andhra Pradesh) presented an opportunity to interact with students in different classes on divergent topics. During the trip I enjoyed being with the students and partially succeeded in soaking in their energies, enthusiasm and knowledge. But, it was their eagerness to know more that left me stunned and pleased at the same time and in no small measure. As Eugene Ionesco put it: “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” My interactions with the sociology and ecology students I shared my experiences at Baghmara (South Garo Hills, Meghalaya) and Saiha (Mizoram) with the two sets of students. For my interactions with the sociology class I decided to focus on my experiences in South Garo Hills – of starting a fresh base, undertaking surveys, setting-up an office, interacting with the villagers and with the government authorities. While talking about my experiences I did not use any photographs or PowerPoint. In the ecology class I talked about jhum (shifting-cultivation) using images and asked and answered questions. Jhum, once a widely prevalent form of cultivation, has people cultivating on different plots each year after the forests on the plots are burnt down. Intricately linked to culture, today, jhum faces a slow death. Snippets of what I shared in the sociology class I arrived at Baghmara in May 2004 after the initial surveys had been undertaken. My role was to set up our office and home. Two of us had gone to do the job with two bags each. We selected a few villages for our elephant conservation programme but had to take permission from the Nokma before we began our intervention. The Nokma is the head of the clan that owns the village. It took a while to figure out when and where best to meet people. Six in the morning at the different tea stalls seemed the ideal time and place to begin our interactions with the locals. Tea stalls were places where people socialized; they also served as pickup and drop points for public transport. This meant that in a day we sometimes ended up gulping 10–12 cups of tea. A forest department officer had warned us that people often came, conducted their research and went away (earned fame and money) without bothering to even share the reports of their surveys causing even the line-departments to be wary of sharing information. People took time to open up, but the more they saw of us