An Indian civil servant, SM Raju, has come up with a novel way of providing employment to millions of poor in the eastern state of Bihar.Under the scheme, each family can earn a minimum of 10,200 rupees ($210).
The idea is involve families below the poverty line in social forestry and give them employment under this scheme for 100 days
S M Raju, a civil servant in Bihar has done just that. Raju has started a campaign to encourage unemployed village folk to start planting trees. This campaign has been linked with the government’s NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and thus the village people earn money by planting these trees.
His campaign to encourage people to plant trees effectively addresses two burning issues of the world: global warming and shrinking job opportunities. Mr Raju's successfully organised 300,000 villagers from over 7,500 villages in northern Bihar to engage in a mass tree planting ceremony. In doing so the agriculture graduate from Bangalore has provided "sustainable employment" to people living below the poverty line in Bihar.
What he did was he linked his "social forestry" programme to the central government's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) which is also designed to provide employment to poor people.
He made a blueprint of his idea and got the support of senior state officials and released a comprehensive booklet of "dos and don'ts" and distributed it to village heads and district officials.He told the villagers that they would get 100 days employment in a year simply by planting trees and protecting them
Mr Raju even came close to planting one billion saplings on a single day. The saplings planted are both fruit and non-fruit trees. The non-fruit seedlings have been planted on the banks of the embankment and on state and national highways - while fruit bearing trees are planted inside the villages.
For more insight of the story go to this link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8257563.stm
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