The Professor was meeting his class of freshers for the first time. From his bag, he pulled out a large jar with a wide mouth. He put rocks, each about 2” in size, into the jar and when they reached the top, he asked the students, “Is the jar full?”. They all agreed that was…
043. Rajendra Singh: Making rivers come back to life
Rajendra Singh “Build a johad!” On Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday in 1985, five young men led by Rajendra Singh got off the bus at Kishori Village in Alwar, Rajasthan, India. They belonged to the Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), founded by Singh. They had come to the village “wanting to fight injustice against all people”, but had…
042. Women of Dangejheri: Forming patrols, protecting the forest
Women of Dangejheri (Cover of an IUCN Journal) Dangejheri is a village in the Ranapur Block of Nayagarh District of Odisha State, India. The village has 30 odd households dominated by the Kondh tribe. As in many parts of Orissa, the forests on the hillocks around Dangejheri had all but vanished by the 1970s. The…
041. Ken Saro-Wiwa: Victim of Nigerian oil and martyr for the cause of the Ogonis
Ken Saro-Wiwa Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995) was a Nigerian writer, television producer, and environmental activist. He belonged to the Ogoni people, who are an ethnic minority in Nigeria. Once oil was found in the Ogoniland of the Niger Delta in the 1950s, millions of tonnes of crude oil have been extracted from the region by multinational…
040. Granny D: Walking 3200 miles for election finance reform
Granny D Can one do extraordinary things late in life, if one becomes driven by a public cause? Granny D showed us that it was possible. In her early years, Doris Haddock (1910-2010), who came to be known as Granny D, was housemaker, who raised two children during the Great Depression and later worked at…
039. Chewang Norphel: Creating artificial glaciers to solve water shortage
Chewang Norphel Born in 1936, Chewang Norphel is a resident of Ladakh in the Himalayan region of India. A civil engineer and a former Sub-divisional Officer, Norphel had been to many areas of Ladakh, building school buildings, bridges, canals, roads etc. But what he did outside his job and does even after retirement is a…
038. The man that corrupted Hadleyburg
Mark Twain The incorruptible town Many years ago, Hadleyburg was known as the most honest and upright town in the whole region. The nineteen main residents of the town were very proud of their fame and taught their children the virtues of being honest and incorruptible. Once, however, the town offended a passing stranger. It…
037. Sundarlal Bahuguna: A gentle warrior fights for the Himalayas
Sundarlal Bahuguna “Himalaya is a land of penance. Nothing in the world can be achieved without penance. I am doing this on behalf of all who are striving to save our dying planet. Why should a river, a mountain, a forest, or the ocean be killed, while we cling to life?” This is what Sunderlal…
036. Anno’s Magic Seeds
Mitsumasa Anno One winter day, a happy-go-lucky young man named Jack meets a wizard, who gives him two golden seeds. “These are magic seeds. Bake one seed and eat it – you will not feel hungry for a whole year. Plant the other seed and you will get two more magic seeds next year.” Jack…
035. Romulus Whitaker: Conserving snakes and crocodiles
Romulus Whitaker Whitaker to the help of the Irulas The Irulas in Tamil Nadu, India, are expert snake catchers. For long they were catching hundreds of snakes and selling them to the flourishing skin trade. When the trade in snakeskin was banned, they lost their livelihood. At that point, Romulus Whitaker entered their lives. He…