Today, people are least bothered about nature, trees andthe surroundings around them, no one take an initiative to save the nature. reduce plastic usage or plant trees but there is a person who planted 10 milliontress, single-handedly. He is Daripalli Ramaiah, a man from Telangana, who isalso known as Chetta Ramaiah.
He was born in Reddtpally village in Khammamdistrict in 1937, in Telangana. He has only completed his academicstill the 10th. Since a child, he has been connected to nature. As achild, he often saw his mother gathering seeds of vegetable plants, and healways gave her a hand in that work.
He had taken aninitiative to bring back the green covering of the Earth which was lost due to industrializationand urbanization. He calls seed the answer to the survival of mankind. Healways took plants with himself on his bicycle and carried seeds in hispocket, which he used to scatter where there was no vegetation or trees. Whiledoing so he used to hope that one day these trees will grow and save mankind,and the greenery will come again.
At times, he was accompanied by his wife, Janamma, andsometimes he was helped by some school children, so that he may fulfill hismission. He was so sacrificing that he even sold his three acres of land topurchase saplings and seeds. He lacked education and didn’t have anyqualifications so he read a huge number of books to fill his education gap, heread books related to trees and plantations to gain knowledge of where a plant can be grown at a particular place so that the seedlings couldn’t gowaste.
Chetta Ramaiah’s wife told in one of the interviews abouthow he was mocked for saving the planet and that people called him mentallyunstable. But this couldn’t break his determination and he continued plantingsaplings hoping for the return of greenery.
For all his efforts he was awarded the third-highest civilian award, Padmashri by the former president, Pranab Mukherjee. The CM ofTelangana has offered him support via its green initiatives. He was alsoawarded an honorary doctorate by the Academy of Universal Global Peace andalso received special recognization from the Andhra Pradesh government.