Overview
- Van Mahotsav is under way from July 1 to 7 and Uttar Pradesh is running an ‘Aam Bahaar, Aapke Dwar’ mango-sapling distribution while preparing a monsoon Mega Plantation Drive that targets 350 million saplings this year.
- Assam has announced the Amrit Brikshya Andolan to plant 1 crore saplings between August 10 and 14 with about 10 lakh students each to plant ten trees to meet the target.
- To improve survival, Assam will pair each student planter with a VB-GRAM-G job card holder and pay the worker Rs 1,500 in instalments only if at least 50% of the saplings survive, with students required to upload geo-tagged photos to win a ‘Briksha Bandhu’ certificate.
- Assam also unveiled a Phalbari plan to distribute one crore indigenous fruit saplings from April next year, a Char-Chapori pilot that will drop drone-dispersed seed-balls on river islands, and a continuing crackdown that officials say is dismantling 40–60 illegal sawmills daily.
- Both states are coupling visible public events—mango feasts, school drives and birthday gardens—with technical steps such as nursery buildup, geo-tagging and conditional payments to address a long-standing problem of low post-planting survival and to link planting to local livelihoods.