Chami Devi Murmu, 42, is fondly called the ‘Lady Tarzan
of Jharkhand’, not because she has befriended tigers in the Muturkham
Chaura and Kadel Pahar jungles of Saraikela-Kharsawan district.
She
is on a mission to protect the local wildlife by saving the forests
that have been fast vanishing due to the havoc caused by the timber
mafia and Naxal insurgency in the area.
A native of
Barisai village in Jharkhand, it has taken Chami nearly 24 years to
mobilise women from over 40 villages to plant sal, eucalyptus and Acacia
trees, among others, to replenish the heavily depleted green cover.
Chami’s eco-brigade of over 3,000 self-help group (SHG) women has
planted more than a million trees and has also developed watersheds to
help raise the ground water levels in the region.
“Trees
are our lives. They fulfil our very real needs for firewood and food
and so I thought why not I become the saviour of our lifesavers,” said a
confident Chami, adding, “Our network of women is so strong that we
immediately come to know where a tree is being chopped. Our
organisation, the Sahyogi Mahila group, a cluster of various SHGs, now
plants trees and also protects them.”
The Santhal
woman said, “Jharkhand means ‘the land of forests’ and in our local
language it also means ‘a piece of gold’. For me, our forests are gold
and we need to preserve them.”
(Saadia Azim)
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