The Change Starts From Your Own House- M Y Yoganathan

The tree that you plant today will provide benefits for years to come. Besides, enhancing the quality of air, planting a tree will simply make you feel good. With one tree plantation, you can support mother earth with agroforestry, land restoration, and afforestation and reforestation activities. Apart from all the organizations and NGOs, we as a responsible citizen should work towards the improvement of the environment. One such highly inspirational act is done by M.Y. Yoganathan. M Y Yoganathan works as a conductor with the Coimbatore Transport Corporation and does not know how to read or write. Yet, Yoganathan is single-handedly responsible for planting 38,000 trees over the past 26 years. He did not let his illiteracy deter his mission too as this Indian environmentalist went about teaching students the importance of environment conservation in schools across Tamil Nadu.

Yoganathan was born in a poor family in Mayavaram, Thanjavur district. He lost his father when he was just one and a half years old. His mother moved to Nilgiris district to work in the tea gardens, and he stayed with his elder sister’s family to continue his studies.

In those early childhood years, he used to visit his mother in Nilgiris only during the holidays. When he came to class 11, he joined his mother and was admitted into a government school in Kotagiri.

As a school student M Yoganathan fought against the timber mafia in the Nilgiris, pasting handwritten posters in public walls, identifying areas where trees had been felled with their survey numbers and urging the police and forest officials to take action against the offenders.

Thirty years later, at 47, he has the same passion for environmental conservation, but holding a government job as bus conductor, he has chosen the softer option of tree planting to express his love for nature.

Yoganathan started planting trees when he was in Class eight. Somehow, he had to stop his studies after Class 12 but continued to be involved in environmental activities as part of Tamil Nadu Green Movement.

On Mondays, his weekly off-day, Yoganathan would most likely be attending a tree planting programme in some school in the state.

He has planted more than 3 lakh saplings in last 30 years and visited over 3,000 schools spread over 32 districts in the state to conduct environmental awareness programmes. On June 5, World Environment Day, he says, around 5,000 schools in the state responded to his appeal to take an oath to protect the environment and plant at least one sapling in their campus.

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