Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Social/Eco point system

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Me and my group from NSE India used to go on long treks into the jungles and one day we thought, wait ! We are the employee's of the foremost stock exchange in the country, bright brains and we are wasting so much fossil fuel on our cars to come for this trek, shame on us. It was start of the monsoon and we decided we will plant 2 trees per people in our group. On our next trek we went to a nursery got good combination of evergreen and seasonal trees and planted them at the rest house we were staying. We know 2 trees per person is very less and we should have done more (and we will do more) but the main theme of my topic is that when you plant trees you get a feeling to nurture it and protect it. So whenever you people go on a long drive or on treks or on vacation, take few saplings with you or better way buy it from local nursery. You just need to dig a small pit and plant the tree and put some water of-course. So many people go on treks every year, millions go on pilgrimage, if on en-route we find a unused land why not plant a tree on it and fulfill our obligations.

My question to my fellow Junta is can we push for a social/eco point systems in our education systems so that school / college kids can be identified by not only their brains but also their social activities !!

Involving young minds in such activities can help them identify their responsibilities as a future citizen of the country and also improve the love for conservation.

This idea has already been implemented in many parts of the country but giving them academic points can increase the seriousness in such activities. Like 100 social/eco points for graduating from your college. These social points can be extended to voluntary activities like helping the old age, teaching at night schools, garbage pickup activities, small restoration work at historical sites, etc. Activities should differ according to the age group.

This can be included as a part of picnic activities that most of the school undertake and even the school can arrange for pickups to many sites (provided there is some arrangement in school or someone like municipal corporations/zilla parishad/government/ngo's etc. fund these activities).

This activity can nonetheless be extended to corporate world as well with so many software/IT/Manufacturing firms having young and enthusiastic people like us can undertake such activities on a large scales.

In the end the number of trees planted may not be that high but my intention is to create awareness among young minds. I am sitting in US getting a Graduate degree and I was shocked to see our fellow Desi Junta sending me harsh emails when I sent them www.greenidol.in petition, calling me a spammer and the petition a spam and saying they are not interested in such activities. So what can poor Dr. Manmohan Singh do when bright people of our nation who are doing Phd are disregarding such a great cause?












Disclaimer: This is my first blog and may not be so good in wordings and written in hurry, so please bear with it and try to absorb my feelings and comments are always welcome!


25 comments:

  1. Awessome! Welcome to the blogosphere, as some call it. The fact that u care about the environment (and about the world in general) comes as no surprise :)

    U rock dude!

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  2. Hey Nishikant, Welcome to the world of Blogging! And what a start! There could be no better topic than you chose for blogging.I am feeling great to read about our Amravati Trek program in this blog. I am proud to be a part of that tree-plantation drive.Hope many people read this blog and get inspired to make our mother earth greener! Rgds...Vikas

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  3. awesome !! so the activity started long back ?
    great start man ... all the best for blogging and "green-side" :)

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  4. heyy Nishikant ..this is really good..totally appreciate what you are doing..its really nice to knw that there are ppl who care about nature...proud of u dude

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  5. yes Koustubh it started long back but major part will start soon ;)

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  6. Yeah... online petitions are spams!!! people protest on streets there voices arent heard... this petition will help rite??? Mr. PM wud have done things if he really wanted to do... not just visiting one tiger sanctury in rajasthan with hellotta convoy to see a tiger and then make a saddenned face before media and forget until next goddam nature conserving conf. btw
    "What u r feeling in life is premature enlightment" i guess u got who i m

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  7. Great beginning dude.I wish every body would learn something from this "greenside" initiative. I hope people would realise the role of trees in our ecosystem and would plant more often.I know i would.
    Great work dude!Lets make people turn to their "greenside".

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  8. This seems like a fun n responsible activity at the treks! We never thought of planting trees. Though, I along with one of my friends used to collect aluminium cans and plastic bags n plastic bottles (thrown away probably by some trekkers like us) and brought those down to dispose off.
    In my office, Our Dept. Head had kept social service activities as part of the 'Goal Setting Criteria'. Only those could qualify for a rating 3. Some ppl welcomed this idea but there are always a few whiners who took it as 'jabardasti'. I thought that was a very good start. A)It gave ppl who did it without expecting any returns, some recognition B) 'Jabadasti hi kyun na ho' most ppl did some good for the society.

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  9. Thats pretty cool to hear that your company had appraisal based on this ! So looks like people will accept it (also with some opposition :)) but we hope this thing works out ! My manager also used to come on trek with us and he used to keep polythene bag with him to collect our trash in trains and also once he scolded another fellow passenger just when he was about to throw trash out of the window, that persons hands were shivering when he was getting thrashed in public.

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  10. Hi, first of all, congratulations on this topic, I love the environment. You have reason to plant trees while enjoying a walk, we can do it! we must do it! We must improve these attitudes to our environment, truly congratulate you.

    Kristal Yemile.

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  11. keep blogging!!!!!!
    keep planting trees!!!!!

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  12. If I thought I was going to die tomorrow,
    I should nevertheless plant a tree today.
    - Stephan Girard

    nice job :)

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  13. Where do you guys go for trekking? And it's really good that you're planting trees while you're at it. Inspirational stuff!

    Sad to hear about http://greenidol.in being labelled as spam though. How do you think that can be improved and be un-labelled?

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  14. We mostly go in Satpura Ranges for our treks which comes in central India on borders of Maharashtra and MP and sometimes deep into MP.
    Well greenidol.in can only be recognized if there is really some action undertaken or there is some kind of proof posted on greenidol.in that online petitions really work. If somehow greenpeace can publicize response of PM Dr. Manmohan Singh on this website then such campaigns will get wide recognition or they will be considered as spam.

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  15. There is a post of "June 24, 2009 10:44 AM " which criticizes www.greenidol.in as spam. Greenpeace people please reply to that post ! But I will recommend actions more than confrontation so that people will know the real value !

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  16. please plant some weed for me as well... so that i can smoke it later...

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  17. Good job by our NSE Team

    Really appreciative ...........

    Keep up the good work...

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  18. Brilliant work done by the NSE team. I do admire the work done by you all. Also, its a very good initiative to educate and encourage people to follow the same.
    If each one plant a tree,u can imagine that it would be clean & green planet.

    Please keep up the good work.

    Cheers to Vikas-bhai & Nipun-bhai, nice to see u here.

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  19. Good one, Nishikant. I am a self-professed Greenie myself and your ideas are great! But, academic points normally don't seem to work. People always figure out some way to beating the system. I remember, there are NSS activities like this in college. But then, not everyone's game about it. The best thing, of course, would be to catch them young. You may have observed that small kids are much more enthu and responsible about stuff like this than even people our age and will hopefully carry it forward as they grow old. These ought to be introduced to kids in elementary school.

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  20. ya ! People try to find loopholes in every system but somehow it can be managed like if it is university wide program then cross college teachers can come as a invigilators. Again there can be loop holes. Agreed with you about young kids. Thanks for commenting.

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  21. Hey Nishu, after reading your blog post the first thing that struck my mind was about Green hosting! If you are not aware of it, it's a website hosting service that runs the server software on machines which are powered by renewable energy sources that help keep the environment green. One of my clients is Jackie Long (a hollywood actor) who is running a green campaign worldwide. We hav hosted their site on a green hosting service.
    So the message here for you and all green activists is host your sites on green hostings. Every comment put here adds to the global pollution aggravating the environmental problems. To be frank, I personally have not contributed much to the greenness of the earth so far, but in the near future I plan to start taking steps towards it.

    References if you ever need'em: http://www.gogreenhosting.com/
    http://www.thinkgreenworldwide.com/
    JAYESH KITUKALE

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  22. Hey Nishu, after reading your blog post the first thing that struck my mind was about Green hosting! If you are not aware of it, it's a website hosting service that runs the server software on machines which are powered by renewable energy sources that help keep the environment green. One of my clients is Jackie Long (a hollywood actor) who is running a green campaign worldwide. We hav hosted their site on a green hosting service.
    So the message here for you and all green activists is host your sites on green hostings. Every comment put here adds to the global pollution aggravating the environmental problems. To be frank, I personally have not contributed much to the greenness of the earth so far, but in the near future I plan to start taking steps towards it.

    References if you ever need'em: http://www.gogreenhosting.com/
    http://www.thinkgreenworldwide.com/

    ReplyDelete
  23. good gng dude .... btw, there was a guy 4m Azingo too :)

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  24. Thanks Jayesh for your wonderful comments ! I posted them to Greenpeace India too :)

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  25. Shine, lol sorry missed out on that one :P

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