Environmental Management programme by EPCO, bhopal

Environment has always been a topic close to my heart. I love nature( want to say it like this; I am a nature lover by nature:)) My hobby is to be in the company of nature, exploring landscapes et al but never been to many places as I find the nature at its best at my place Bhopal. There are abundant lakes and green land  to go and simply sit and talk to the nature. 'Bharat Bhavan' is my all time favourite place to spend time with the upper lake. The backyard on the roof is an extremely quiet place to sit,you can have the view of the lake and almost 75% of the city. This love for nature keep me awake to learn some or the other thing about it given the elephantine problem of pollution today, try to know more about how can I contribute to make earth a better place to live.

EPCO The Environmental Planning & Coordination Organisation is the State's premier organization in the field of environment related matters. It has made a strategic shift to focus on environment issues that confront the poor in the rural and urban areas. A lot of work has been done by the organization in terms of sensitising people about the environment related issues. They conduct training workshops on a regular basis and this time I've got the opportunity to attend a course on Environment Management. 

Today is the day 2, so just quoting my experiences of day1. 

The programme was scheduled at 8 and we were already briefed about it via mail. Most of the participants were late including me;) The workshop already started an hour late. While the introduction was taken by Mr. Lokendra Thakkar, the principal of the institute, a kit was distributed to us. It was beautifully arranged, along with the regular schedule and a quiz paper on Gandhiji's life there were two publications in the folder one was आज भी खरे हैं तालाब by Anupam Mishra and अनमोल बूँदें a booklet by UN habitat prog ( Water for Asian cities, UN Human settlement prog.) आज भी खरे हैं तालाब describes about the development of lakes and the rich culture of India to make water bodies and the techniques used to construct a lake like the three tier technique, the dynamics of related occupations, celebrations associated with it et al( have not yet read the whole book, will describe it in the later blog). अनमोल बूँदें describes the technical aspects of retaining ground water and the water purification technology.The session began with a thought provoking lecture by Mr. Uddayan Bajpayi, a thinker, Writer, Philosopher, doctor and a researcher. The versatile personality led us to a different world of reality through his knowledge talk. He took us to the era of 1800s and talked about the British invasion of India and the attacks on Indian culture, the गौ रक्षा आँदोलन of 1888 and the truth behind it, the hand-loom revolution, the plight of Red Indians and all about our existence in continuum with the nature. Some facts that I learnt from the talk are:

*Indian culture was disgraced by the British Parliament in 1813
*The गौ रक्षा आँदोलन was against the British army not against the Muslims.
*In the Japanese book of metallurgy the iron made by the Indian tribe 'Aagarhiya' had been awarded the best iron of the century. 

Some quotes which I liked are:
*circulation of decision for discussion( निर्णय का flow)
*separation is never absolute( i.e. we are in continuum with the nature) Having attended his lecture one book which I've added to my reading list is 'Hind Swaraj' by Mahatma Gandhi.

Post lunch we were taken to a field visit after a brief introduction on the topic 'Sanitation' by Ms. Neeta Shukla. 

Some interesting facts learnt were:*Quantity of germs liberated by 250gms of stool via open defecation
*Global hand washing day is observed on 15th of oct since 2008
*The seven components of a 'Nirmal Gaon' and the 'Ujjawal gaon' and the various schemes of the govt. to promote sanitation.Mr. Amod took a session on 'Drinking Water in MP n CG. Some interesting facts learnt are:

*40/55 lpcd( litres per capita per day) in the vicinity of 500 metres is the standard
*A very good point he raised was the non availability of data with the govt. about ground water in terms of its being 'over exploited' and in the 'critical stage'.

to be continued..................................