Devaraj Urs Road is one of the most important roads in Mysore with one end of it touching the Mysore palace.

In spite of being the central road of Mysore and being the commercial center of the city, the road in terms of aesthetics does not score high. The road is planned with automobiles in mind while pedestrians and shoppers are not considered as much. One major problem pedestrians face is the intense sun during afternoons. Between 11 AM and 4 PM, most people avoid the road. The best and most obvious solution is planting trees.
As of today, 14 trees exist on the kilometer long road. Just 14! I did a quick math to find out how many trees can be planted in all. Considering the intersecting roads, electric poles and a gap of at least 15 feet between adjacent saplings, 240 trees can be planted (both sides included). How would it look like? See the images below:


Next big step for me is to take this plan to all concerned government departments and obtain clearances to do the planting. Funds need to be arranged which have been promised by a few shopkeepers. Parking area also has to be considered before we go ahead with this plan. A sketch of how this can be planned is shown below:

Also, there are reservations about the plan by some people about which I’ll write in the next post. As for the 14 trees on the road which exist now, here are the photos. These trees should serve as an example that even large trees do not pose problems to the buildings.

2 trees near ING Vysya and 1 tree Near Khadims

2 trees Near Foodworld and 1 tree Near the Dargah

3 trees Near Bahusar cycle and watch shop and 1 tree Near NS Road junction

1 tree Near last Junction on DD Urs Road and 1 tree to the left of Bombay tiffanys

1 tree to the right of Bombay tiffanys and 1 tree in front of café coffee day
I will be posting again with more details of the plan, the advantages of tree planting on busy roads such as this and how this is done in other countries. Also, please provide feedback, whether positive or negative so that I can use them in my discussions with the government officials.

I thought I’d write this while the euphoria of winning a battle in democratic ways has still not subsided. The issue was about cutting of 137 trees in Lalit Mahal Road in Mysore for easing traffic flow. Many times, such acts just go unnoticed. However, this region being a declared heritage site and one of the most picturesque roads in Mysore had many concerned citizens on its side. A few good government officials too had the good sense of calling a public meeting to discuss the issue. As a result, more than 200 people representing many types of people had gathered. Lawyers, environmentalists, residents of the locality, political parties and even a few goons! After some attempts of issue-hijacking by vested interests and after police intervention, discussions started.

While some were in support of cutting the trees saying that road widening would reduce accidents on the road, others were of the view that many parallel roads existed which could be improved and hence the trees could be saved. Lawyers proved the legal barriers in cutting the trees, residents proved that the problem was not the width of the road but uncontrolled flow of heavy vehicles.

Finally, proper reasoning had more effect than loudness and the government decided that the trees would not be cut.

One of the most beautiful roads in Mysore was saved from becoming a casualty to thoughtless development.

The day started pretty early at 6 AM in the morning with the planting of 6 saplings. It was done in a park close to Ashwin’s house since it was a week day and planting anywhere else would have taken considerably more time. Indian tulip, Cannon ball tree, tamarind, yellow cassia and bauhinia were planted. A few neighbours joined us in planting the trees. Times of India photographer, Sridhar joined us while planting the trees.

Once we had planted the saplings, it was time to protect trees. As I said in my earlier post, the Mysore corporation has plans to cut 123 trees on Lalithmahal road. The public meeting which was postponed to Monday. Yet, there was a demonstration near the trees which are planned to be cut down. Our view is that the trees can be spared. Making the road here  is an engineering problem which can be solved easily. I hope the corporation understands this and spares the trees.

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Tomorrow is world environment day and we are supposed to do something about it right? What about the day after? Isn’t that as important as tomorrow? What about every day? I think tomorrow is just a reason for getting the unstarted people to start doing something about the environment.

So what’s really special about tomorrow? May be you could just make a conscious effort to make environment  part of everything we do tomorrow.

• Watch what you eat. Ensure its local, organic etc.
• How are you going to office? Could you use public transport at least so that you could say “I tried”.
• Could you plant a sapling. If not, could you just visit a plant nursery, just to get a feel of how beautiful they really are.

I’m not being particular about anything because there are always a 1000 different ways to do something. Its enough if you at least start living in the green direction. In whichever small way you can. Tomorrow can be the time to start this. If you ask me, now is the time to start.

UPDATES:

Last Sunday,  we planted 22 trees at a park in Gokulam, Mysore. It was a mix of college students, school students, slum children, all of whom were extremely enthusiastic about the whole affair of planting saplings. Will write a detailed story of the whole thing in a separate post.

Tomorrow, we will be planting 6-10 saplings again in Gokulam, mostly friends.

Also tomorrow, there seems to be a public meeting on cutting 123 trees on lalitha mahal road. Will be attending that if it is there. According to latest updates, the DC of Mysore, P.Manivannan has stopped the tree cutting plans.

And lastly, you can follow Sapgreen now on twitter: http://twitter.com/sapgreentrees

It has been a long time since there was any action on the tree front. The reasons were not as much about time as it was about disappointment. To put it in a word, you could call the period as the dip. The hassles with government officials, apathy from the neighbourhood who couldn’t even part with their subsidized water etc was just too much to handle. And to top it up, the expenses kept mounting up while funds were still not growing. As a result, Sapgreen pretty much went into hibernation. Meanwhile, we took some measures on our side:

• The trees were watered at least once and sometimes twice a week. I know it should have been tough on the trees but they seem now to be doing well.
• The trees which didn’t need watering by us were monitored till the onset of the rains now. At last the rains have come.

In the past 2 months, we haven’t planted any new trees due to the scorching summer and lack of the pre-monsoon showers. Now, the rains have finally arrived and that gives us hope. Also, there are a few things learnt in the past one year which I think are worth mentioning:

1. Tree planting is dear to the heart and we know we are being true in this act. Just because some people show apathy doesn’t mean we should lose focus. Our goal should be to plant trees and not to convert every single person into an environmentalist.
2. A project involving the public however true it may be, if it is not transparent enough doesn’t work. We wanted to make a business model out of Sapgreen. However, the nature of the act being public in nature doesn’t quite suit itself to be called a business. In fact,  just the word ‘business’ creates a negative connotation for some people. Our plan is now to create more transparency. To publish all accounts online. All income and all expenditure. However, this is bound to take some time.
3. While we were doing all activities in full steam, we made a lot of contacts and we came to know some good people. Our activities stopped and there is well a chance that some people might have become skeptical about us. This is a loss we cannot afford at all. We are now in a state where we have to rework for all of that loss.

So, with these in mind, we have started some work again. 3 things we are working on now:

1. A proposal to plant trees on D.Devaraj Urs Road in Mysore as suggested by FORT-Mysore. The road although being in the center of the city barely has 10 trees on its 1 km stretch. Progress till now: Some of the shopkeepers are now ready to plant trees in front of their shops. Support of corporator sought and is positive. Next task: To approach the various government departments and get their letter of consent.
2. To plant trees in at least 10 different localities in Mysore. 10 trees in each of these localities which will be looked after by volunteers. Progress till now: Approached voluntary groups such as Vivekananda youth forum. Next task: Identification of localities by its volunteers.
3. To revamp the Sapgreen site and start Sapgreen community (at least now). This plan has been there for months together but just didn’t happen. Will work actively on this now but i think it will be some days before this is finished.

Will write again with the progress report.