As Mother's Day in Canada and America is approaching soon on May 8th I was very happy and overwhelmed to read captioned article in Toronto Star English daily newspaper in World section of May 1, 2016. This article states that even the monsoon rains don't keep the women of this tiny tribal village in India's eastern state of Odisha from patrolling the nearby forest at dawn.
Clad in colourful saris and armed with sticks and machetes, they file in rain through rice folds and on to a muddy path that leads into 500 acres of wooded hills in the Nayagarh district. They are looking for intruders who come to cut down their trees without permission. Once that forest was declared by the British in the 1800's as their own but now under India's landmark 2006 Forest Rights Act, tribal villages like Ghunduribadi can claim title to their ancestral lands, some 390,000 square kilometres of forest all across India. These trible women organized to restore and protect forest. They banned goats grazing from the land to allow trees to regenerate. Anyone needing wood had to get permission from the village committee.
I bow my head and salute these tribal women for their strong commitment to protect their land which men cannot do and on Mother's Day I extend my warmest wishes to them and all mothers around the world living or no more in this world for their unconditional love, care, dedication and sacrifice for their family without expecting any rewards in return. Everyday is Mother's Day.
Suresh and Bhavna Patel
Markham, Canada.
