I love being with nature. I love plants and trees. I love to involve
children in eco-conservation,” says eco-crusader Vanitha Mohan, sitting
in the office of Siruthuli, an NGO that focuses on restoring tanks, installing rainwater harvesting systems, and planting trees across Coimbatore.
Siruthuli literally means ‘tiny drop’, but Vanitha’s plans are anything but tiny!
Meet the doughty woman, who is spearheading a people’s movement to
revive a dead river, the Noyyal, which was once the lifeline of the
Kongu region.
“I want the Noyyal that my grandfather handed over to me for my
children,” says the 63-year-old Vanitha whose past record of restoring
several waterbodies in Coimbatore has generated a lot of expectations on
her latest plans.
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| Image & Article courtesy : theweekendleader.com |
Noyyal originates in the Western Ghats near Coimbatore and meanders
along a 160 km stretch through the districts of Coimbatore, Tiruppur,
Erode, and Karur before joining the Cauvery.
It is fed by 34 small streams flowing down from the Western Ghats in
Coimbatore district. A well-planned network of tanks is found alongside
the river, said to be constructed by the later Chola kings for flood
control and water harvesting.
The once perennial river is dry most part of the year now and has been
polluted by the sewage and industrial effluents flowing into it at many
places.
Will the river regain its lost glory? That’s the million dollar question as Vanitha and her team at Siruthuli areplanning an ambitious restoration programme. All her past work though would seem like child’s play compared to the task at hand. But Vanitha, managing trustee of Siruthuli, is undaunted by the enormity of the mission.
“It’s very difficult, but we will do it,” she declares.
It was this very spirit that led to the formation of Siruthuli
back in 2003, at a time when Coimbatore was reeling under severe
drought and the water table in the city and its vicinity had plummeted
to alarming levels.
“The situation was very bad then. The monsoon had failed for three
years in a row and water was not available even at 1,000 feet,” recalls
Vanitha. Having joined the family business in the mid 1990s, she had already
desilted a few ponds near their factory at Perianaickenpalayam and seen
how groundwater in the area had got recharged and dry wells came to be
filled with water.
“There were few people in our company who were extremely passionate
about water conservation. They helped me in these initiatives,” she
reminisces. When drought hit the city in 2003, she could relate it to the shrinking
tanks and lakes in the city, which were being encroached upon, polluted
and abused to the extent that their storage capacity had decreased
rapidly over the years.
“There are nine major nine major tanks in Coimbatore. Until the 1970’s
they were brimming with water, but the rot set in later with
urbanisation. Garbage, building debris, and sewage found their way into
the tanks,” says Vanitha. Not just the tanks, but the 34 streams feeding River Noyyal had also
been choked and the result was the fall in groundwater table in the
city.
To replicate the success she had achieved at a few small ponds and
check dams near their factory across the bigger waterbodies in
Coimbatore she needed more resources and here her family background
helped her.
Vanitha’s father LG Varadarajulu was a second generation businessman,
who had got into manufacturing of automobile garage equipment and built
from scratch the ELGI group of companies along with his brothers. Her husband Vijay Mohan’s family owned Premier Mills. But Mohan exited
from the textiles industry, got into manufacturing of automotive parts
and built PRICOL (Premier Instruments and Controls Limited), whose
current turnover is close to Rs 1,100 crore.
Vanitha is the Vice Chairman of PRICOL. She takes care of internal
audit and the HR department, apart from the CSR activities of the
company.
So in 2003, PRICOL along with “a few conscientious corporate business
houses of Coimbatore” – Bannari Amman Group of Companies, LMW Group of
Companies, ELGI Group of Companies and Sri Sankara Eye Society –came
together to form Siruthuli with a mandate to solve the water and environmental problems in the region.
The six founder-trustees include Vanitha and SV Balasubramaniam, chairman of Bannari Amman Sugars.
Vanitha’s previous experience in restoring ponds came to her aid and
Siruthuli hit the ground running, cleaning one tank after another.
“We restored Krishnampathy tank first. It used to be spread over 125
acres, but it had shrunk to 75 acres due to encroachments. We removed
silt from the tank bed up to 17 feet and created a bund around it.
“It rained for just two days and the entire tank got filled up. It gave
us confidence and after that there was no looking back. We cleaned five
more tanks in a matter of fifteen months,” she says.
The organisation has spent about Rs 20 crore on various environmental projects till date. In 2013, they started cleaning Periyakulam, a 325 acre tank located
right in the middle of the city. “We were carrying on the work for two
months, day and night, using six JCB machines,” says Vanitha. But the highlight of the project was the involvement of the people of Coimbatore in the cleaning work.
“For four consecutive Sundays, people turned up in large numbers to
join hands with us. On the last Sunday we had around 10,000 people,”
says Vanitha, whose organisation has cleaned an estimated 1,000 acre
tank area and strengthened a stretch of 18,246 metres of bunds in
Coimbatore.
Out of all the tanks they had cleaned up, Vanitha picks Kuruchi, the
largest one with an area of 345 acres, located on the way to Pollachi,
as the project that had the most significant impact.
“Coconut trees around a radius of 25 km from the tank were drying up.
The area turned fertile after we cleaned the tank and it filled up with
water,” she reveals.
Siruthuli kicked off Noyyal restoration project in March on
World Water Day by launching Noyyal River Restoration Federation
(NORFED) in the presence of social activist Anna Hazare and actor
Suriya.
NORFED has partner NGOs from three other districts through which Noyyal
flows - Jeeva Nadhi Noyyal from Tiruppur, Olirum Erode from Erode and
Noyyal Kaapom from Karur.
Vanitha is conscious of the challenges lying ahead. “Lot of things are
involved in river restoration. We are now doing a survey of the streams
that bring water to Noyyal, which are in Coimbatore. These have to be
mapped and the streams need to be cleaned first,” she says.
There is a plan to divide the entire stretch of the river into 500 m
sections, with each section proposed to be handed over to institutions
or individuals who can take up the cleaning work and later maintain it
as well.
But the biggest problem would be plugging the inflow of sewage and
industrial effluents into the river, an issue they face even in the
tanks they have cleaned in the city.
“Due to sewage content the tanks are covered with water hyacinths,
which are water guzzlers. We plan to set up low-cost decentralised
sewage treatment plants at few places along the river to tackle this
issue,” she says.
On the positive side, she is excited about the support she has received
from the local panchayats, who are key stakeholders in the project.
“They are very keen in saving the river,” says Vanitha, who holds a PG
diploma in business management from University of Strathclyde in
Glasgow. Besides PRICOL, Vanitha’s family also has companies with interests in hospitality, real estate and few other sectors.
Her first son Vikram is into business and is the MD of PRICOL. Her
second son Viren is a nature lover and a wildlife photographer, much
like his mother who remains a naturalist at heart even though she is
active in the family business.
“I would like to be known as a crusader for Mother Nature rather than as a businesswoman,” signs off Vanitha.
source:
theweekendleader.com
The locals of Rathore’s village said that he even distributed 4,000
saplings to the children who paid him a visit in the hospital, just
three days before his death.
