Page 119 - Vogue - India (January 2020)

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SONIA JABBAR
OWNER NUXALBARI TEA ESTATE, NAXALBARI, INDIA
In the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, people are wary of crop-raiding pachyderms
due to shrinking forest cover, but the Nuxalbari Tea Estate aims to be a safe space for
elephants. With its Hathi Sathi programme, Sonia Jabbar’s 1,200-acre tea estate has
received an Elephant Friendly Tea certification (a first in the country) from the Wildlife
Friendly Enterprise Network and the University of Montana. “We aim to raise the
consciousness of the residents here,” says Jabbar. This extends to about 2,500 people
who live on the estate (including 500 permanent workers and their families). There
are three principal aspects to this programme. “We actively protect the elephants. No
one is allowed to harass or tease them, even photographers aren’t allowed to get close.
Elephants like to be left alone, so we do that,” says Jabbar. There’s also a formalised
education programme for the children of the estate workers aiming to increase
awareness about environmental issues alongside a re-wilding programme that spans
over 100 acres. “Somehow, tea estates are monoculture, but I propagate a number of
native species to improve the biodiversity of our estate and provide a variety of plant
species for the elephants to feed on.” – SS

SHAGUN SINGH, 38
FOUNDER GEELI MITTI FARMS,
MAHRORA, INDIA

In Mahrora village, on the outskirts of
Nainital in Uttarakhand, little dwellings
that look like they’re right out of hobbit
land speckle the landscape. Geeli Mitti
Farms has become one of the leading
authorities on natural buildings in the
country, drawing architecture students
and enthusiasts from all over. But
that’s just one aspect of what it does.
Shagun Singh founded this collective
of 11 villages (that falls under the Naina
Devi Himalayan Bird Conservation
Reserve) after 10 years of MNC life. At
its demonstration permaculture farm,
Singh teaches you how to adapt these
practices to your home, whether it’s
a matchbox flat or a farmhouse. She
elaborates, “There are multiple versions
of every system that we demonstrate.
For example, there are three systems
of rainwater harvesting, four of sewage
management, three of composting, five
of grey-water recycling. People speak of
how one has to give up one’s urban life BAHAR DUTT, 44
and relocate to a rural area to practise ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALIST, DELHI, INDIA
sustainable living, but we want to show Few journalists in India have covered the environment as extensively, or
that it can be done anywhere.” – SS intensively, as Bahar Dutt, winner of the Wildscreen Award and the Ramnath
Goenka Award for environmental journalism. When we speak, she’s at
Sambhar lake in Rajasthan, reporting on the death of over 15,000 birds. “It is
tough because I had no support from any media house for this. I hired my own
camera person, reached the site and started reporting the story over Twitter
and Facebook. My posts soon went viral and I started getting requests from
the media on the story. We need more people willing to report facts from
ground zero,” she says. The environment, she says, is a political space. “You
could be reporting on climate change from the Arctic or on a tree chopped
in your neighbourhood, but if your stories don’t shake the system and make
it accountable, then it’s just birdsong. Writing about your moments of joy on
a safari is not ‘environmental reporting’. Someone needs to ask the tough
questions. Environmental stories need to be reported as political stories. Delhi
being the most polluted city in the world is not just an environment story, it’s a
political one,” says the former environment editor of CNN-News18. – SS n

www.vogue.in VOGUE INDIA JANUARY 2020 119