The Green Donor

We all have been discussing the impact of pollution on the environment for decades. Are we taking efforts to reduce it? To some extent, yes! However, the vision of Green India was responsibly shouldered by a Mumbai-based businessman Dilip Shah, who has been donating over 1 lakh saplings every year. 

This gesture of extending a helping hand to blossom Mother Nature had been undertaken by him for more than a decade. Earlier, in the late 90s, Shah had a business of commercial tree plantation. The owner of Kutch Agro, which is into agriculture food processing and plantation contracts, he donated a few thousand left over saplings to local villagers and farmhouse owners. As he saw the saplings growing into beautiful trees, he voluntarily started donating the saplings and gradually this became a practice. 

He has also been allotted a space by the civic body in a Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) garden in Matunga, where he planted saplings of fruit trees. Shah said, “The 1999 recession in realty market led me shift into the rural market and I chose to become a commercial planter and I started undertaking tree plantation contracts all over India.” He further added, “I was informed that birds in want of proper food and habitation, are disappearing from the city. So, I decided to distribute 70,000 to 75,000 saplings of fruit trees and started planting at BMC Garden on Telang Road, Matunga. BMC’s garden department has also shown interest to plant the fruit trees in various municipal gardens of Mumbai.”