Dr. Soundarya Manohari Velamati (ELP 2024) | Founding and Managing Trustee, Gramadeep Charitable Trust, India
At the age of 12-13, I gathered the guts to say no to meat, expressing my love for biodiversity. Being born and brought up in Kovvali village, in the eco-sensitive zone of Kolleru Lake, Asia’s largest shallow freshwater lake in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, I grew up admiring the rich biodiversity and, at the same time, horrified, listening to the gruesome stories of lake encroachments and the uncompassionate killing of migratory birds visiting us from far away. Millions of migratory and resident birds like Pelicans, Painted Storks, Godwits, Ibises, Flamingos, Whistling ducks, Jacanas, Redshanks, Herons, and what not, the skyline of our village and the surface of the hundreds of acres of our village lakes were entirely swarmed with millions of these birds and their flocks. Such a wonderful sight of nature is still a beautiful memory in the minds of our villagers. Our village elderly farmers are still nostalgic about how water from these village lakes, carrying the droppings of millions of birds, enriched their paddy farms, improving soil fertility. My village with its inherent beauty, fertile soil, and immense wealth of natural resources, had all the potential to be self-sufficient, rich, clean, and stay healthy in a safe environment. However, despite all these factors, the village grappled with poor sanitation and ill health, pollution and biodiversity loss, ignorance and poverty, and, ironically, scarcity of water for drinking and irrigation.
As a child, I was curious to witness and hear the tales directly from the village community as my grandfather being respected as a village elder, the rural folk thronged our house veranda to resolve their personal and community issues. Those interactions and painful stories of avoidable suffering from the village disturbed me enormously and blatantly exposed me to the real socio-economic, political, and environmental fabric of rural India. From those woes of misery and helplessness evolved my steely determination and resolve, and in my early teens, I decided to dedicate all my life to community empowerment and sustainable development, especially in villages. I lived with that dream in my mind and heart throughout. My academic graph went up till my PhD in the School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi with field research in London. Also, I parallelly worked as a researcher for the Ministry of Defence of Government of India, but it only made me more restless. I felt the greater need and urgency to deal with the threats in our villages first, which constantly perturbed me. It is this righteousness and sense of duty that guided me and motivated me to initiate a long-awaited step of founding a voluntary organization for rural development and environment conservation, finally in 2015 called Gramadeep, literally meaning lamp of a village (Telugu), from my native village of Kovvali.
From day one, Gramadeep Charitable Trust has focused on achieving its goals through collaborative leadership and community partnership. Primarily aiming at building clean, green, environment-friendly villages with sustainable development, we are reducing the carbon footprint by planting thousands of trees, improving sanitation, and beautifying the villages by transforming the garbage hotspots into green spaces of utility and also managing solid waste. Through a variety of awareness initiatives, advocacy, and also through our annual biodiversity festivals, we sensitize the community on various environmental challenges, showcase best practices in natural farming techniques, fight against single-use plastic, encourage citizen participation, educate about their rights to have quality life and nurture changemakers to advocate more steps towards environment conservation and biodiversity protection; while promoting safe water and healthy life and also traditional knowledge. Moreover, Gramadeep Trust is currently endeavoring to inspire the community to collectively take responsibility for water bodies’ protection. In fact, I write with a heavy heart that of the hundreds of acres of village lakes that we proudly possessed, and the biodiversity that I admired as a child disappeared, and hardly 10% of village lakes remained in reality. The rich water resources that recharged our groundwater and offered various services have been illegally converted to paddy farms and aqua tanks involving deadly pesticides. Through Gramadeep, we initiated a legal battle against the state government in 2023 for the restoration of our 304-acre village lake and were successful in getting a status quo order, but the battle continues.
Friends! This is not just a story of our village but a story of many other villages across India and the globe. With many educated people like us leaving villages and migrating in search of better opportunities, our rich natural wealth of lakes, land, sand, minerals, and our soil back home have become lucrative sources of business for many opportunists. I opted for the Environmental leadership program at the mighty institution of UC Berkeley as a green soldier, with the hope that it will strengthen me and equip me with better expertise and strategies to deal with such alarming issues back home which are threatening the very survival of our villages and our planet.
Left: Popular Kondapalli traditional toys stall at one of our annual biodiversity festivals.
Right: Villagers voluntarily taking part in plantation project of Gramadeep initiated by them in their neighbourhood in Kovvali.
Above: Dr. Manohari Velamati in May 1999, alongside the 304.7 Acre Lake in Kovvali Village; same lake turned in to private agricultural farm
[Blog post image: Gramadeep Trust is fighting legal battle for restoration of lake.]