Dr. Anil Joshi of HESCODr.Anil Prakash Joshi who was born on April 6,1955 did his M. Sc. in Botany standing fourth in the Garhwal University and later did his Ph. D in environmental science in 1979. Starting his teaching profession from Government Post- Graduate College, Kotdwara, he was instrumental in guiding research works to his students, 21 of whom got their Ph.D degrees.
The main focus of his research activities were the sustainable development of the Himalayan region which due to over exploitation of the vast resources had been badly degraded over the years. He encouraged score of his Ph.D. students to work in hill villages and directed academic research oriented towards solving the basic needs of the residents of the mountain.
Pained at watching the ecological degradation and the wretched existence of the local communities who suffered due to the neglect and apathy of the policy planners towards the Himalayas, Dr. Joshi quit his comfortable career as a teacher and plunged himself wholeheartedly into research and development work for the people living in the hills.
He formed Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization (HESCO), a voluntary organisation and moved from the foothills of Himalayas to village Gwar Chowki in district Chamoli up in the Himalayas. Virtually with no financial resources or land, Dr. Anil Joshi alongwith his wife and a team of dedicated colleagues started earnestly in providing technological inputs for the poor farmers, artisans and women folk with an aim to enhance the productivity of their farm yields but also to improve their overall living conditions.
Concerned at the higher rate of landslides in the Garhwal and Kumoan regions which had rendered vast stretches of land useless resulting in many more problems, Dr. Anil Joshi set about the task of checking the menace of land slides through biological methods. The experiments of growing` RambansÂ’, a known plant to check soil erosion became very successful and the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) which had been facing the recurring problem of landslides causing disruptions in the road traffic took the technical advice of Dr. Joshi to successfully check landslides on the Rishikesh-Badrinath road. Dr. Joshi also encouraged village folk particularly the women to make artifacts and handicrafts from the fibre of `RambansÂ’. The entire technology in this venture was provided by HESCO. The state government also adopted the technology in its rural development programmes.
Dr. Joshi also intervened in other fields to provide indigenous technologies to the rural people in the mountains like use of biomass as fuel, making low cost toilets, use of local fruits in making jams, jellies, juices, pickles, incense sticks and mosquito repellents through women centres and educating rural people about repair of electrical and other gadgets. The women centres also sold these products and in short time these eatables were very popular with large number of pilgrims going to the “Char Dham” yatra in Garhwal buying the products. Hundreds of women benefitted from the project which they ran themselves. The venture had helped village women to utilize their fruit and other produce for productive use which enhanced their economic condition as well.
With growing acceptability of the efforts launched by Dr. Joshi, rural people came forward to donate their lands for a full fledged research centre. Working with their bare hands, young colleagues of HESCO raised the infrastructure for the centre and named it `VigyanprasthÂ’. Over the years, the centre has become an important informal institution carrying forward message of spread of education, research and sustainable development working in close proximity with hill people.
Another important venture in which Dr. Joshi played a stellar role was the use of `LantanaÂ’, a known weed invading the forests and agricultural lands for productive purposes. Selecting a batch of unemployed rural youth, HESCO trained them in making furniture on the lines of cane furniture. Some of the youths started making Lantana furniture on commercial basis to earn their livelihood. The technology propagated by HESCO was in great demand and voluntary organisations working in the field of rural development from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir soon started flocking to Dr. Joshi to get training and guidance in this field. Volunteers of HESCO had already trained scores of people in these two states to make furniture from Lantana weed. It was not only Lantana weed which attracted the attention of Dr. Joshi he also worked to put several other weeds to productive use like Parthenium, Eupatorium and Euphorbia. He had also been pleading with the national policy planners for an appropriate National Weed Policy for purposeful use of these weeds in the country.
Another important area in which Dr. Joshi pioneered was the technological upgradation of the Watermills in the mountains. Alarmed at the want of power in the hilly, inaccessible and backward regions of Himalayas, he thought of utilisation of vast number of watermills spread all over Himalayas for generating power. He estimated that there were more than five lakh watermills in the entire Himalayan region stretching from J&K to the North-eastern states. It was found that due to lack of proper technological innovations, the productivity of these Watermills was far less. Dr. Joshi started with his technological intervention to upgrade the Watermills and also to use them in generating power. Hundreds of Watermills in Garhwal Himalayas were upgraded and some even started producing power for local use.
As most of the Watermillers belong to the poor segments of rural hilly areas, Dr.Joshi with an aim to empower them also endeavoured to organise them. While his mission to upgrade the Watermills spread throughout the Himalayan states, he also encouraged the Watermillers from these states to have their own Watermillers Associations. He was also instrumental in organising a National Watermillers Convention in the National capital in December 1998. Dr. Joshi believed that the humble Watermills could truly be a vehicle for overall sustainable development of the Himalayas without any ecological hazards as associated with bigger dams.
He advocated that power should be generated through these Watermills which should be utilised for local purposes and the excess power could be sold outside through a grid system on the lines of successful models in some European countries. Availability of power in the backward hilly areas would automatically result in the development of the area. The generation of power and the maintenance of the grid system should be handled by the village youths giving them employment.
Another campaign which Dr. Joshi launched was the launching of “ Jal Andolan ” in 1997 for the water rights of the people living in the Himalayas. He was pained to watch that while the Himalayas provided bulk of the water to the rest of the country, people living in the Himalayas were starved of even drinking water and irrigation facilities. Only in Garhwal Himalayas people in more than 800 villages had no drinking water. To press for their rights, Dr. Joshi started a “padyatra” from Gangotri to Delhi in November 1997.
During the 1991, Uttarkashi earthquake, Dr. Joshi was in the forefront in not only providing succuor to the affected population of Garhwal but also in providing long term solutions to minimise the devastating consequences in terms of deaths by building earthquake resistant houses. He invited renowned architect Mr. Laurie Baker who trained local masons and helped them built some houses with local material. His efforts bore fruits as during the March 1999 Chamoli earthquake, the houses built with the assistance of Mr. Laurie Baker stood the test of time and remained intact. HESCO has embarked upon another project to train further more masons in making earthquake resistant houses.
After the devastating forest fires in the Himalayan region in the summer of 1999, experiment done by Dr. Joshi to use forest litter and pine needles by making compost was highly appreciated. Experiment done in few villages found that accumulated forest litter and pine needles were the main cause of forest fires which destroy thousands acres of forests besides causing incalculable harm to the ecology of the Himalayas. Dr Joshi who had successfully shown that litter removal from forest for compost can prevent forest fire. He in his recent booklet intimated that the forest litter could be put to commercial use by allowing the people living in the periphery of the forests to make compost. He said that this would not only take care of the menace of forest fires but would also help increasing the yield of the agricultural fields in the hills which suffer due to want of chemical fertilisers. He said that this would help in reinoculating the love of the forests amongst local people who had lost the love for forests due to the forest policy in vogue but would also help generate income for those living close to the forests. The thesis propounded by Dr. Joshi has been greatly applauded by the forest officials as well as policy planners.
Dr. Joshi who is an Ashoka fellow has authored over 80 research papers and ten books dealing with sustainable development of the Himalayas through various means. A member of many professional and academic bodies like being a fellow of Indian Botanical Society, Indian Society of Forestry, he is also a coordinator of Technological Intervention for Mountain Ecosystem (TIME), a programme supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Council for Advancement of PeopleÂ’s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART).
He also went to the Scandinavian countries on a study exchange programme in 1985 and visited the Forest Research Institute, Malaysia in 1983.
Himalayan Environmental Studies And Conservation Organization (HESCO)
Anil Joshi's Profile in Ashoka
This info at:
www.indianngos.com/people/anilprakashjoshi.htmMore about him and HESCO at: 4to40.com/legends/index.asp?article=legends_aniljoshi