Meet the forest man of india : Jadav Payeng

Jadav Payeng, a resident of Majuli, is an environmental activist and forestry worker. He is famously known as the forest man of India because he built a forest by himself. He was born in 1959 into an Indigenous mising tribe in Assam, India. His family includes his wife and 3 children. 

How did he do it?

In 1979, when he was only 16, he encountered many dead snakes that died due to excessive heat after floods washed them on the tress-less sandbar. That was when he decided to bring about a change. He planted around 20 bamboo seedlings on the sandbar, took proper care of them, and continued to plant more trees, all on his own. This was his attempt to see a better living environment for the snakes and simply an effort to transform the area into a forest. 

 Over the course of about 30 years, he was successful in making the land a forest reserve now home to various wildlife. The forest, called Molai forest named after him Jadav ‘Molai’ Payeng, is located near Kokilamukh of Jorhat, Assam, India, and encompasses an area of about 1,360 acres.

About the Molai Forest

The Molai Forest has become a lush sanctuary for wildlife, including Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceroses, and many deer and rabbits. The forest is also a haven for monkeys and various bird species, especially vultures. With thousands of trees, including varieties of native hardwoods and flowering species, as well as a large bamboo grove, this forest has grown into a vibrant, self-sustaining ecosystem that supports diverse animal and plant life.

Each year, a herd of roughly 100 elephants makes an annual visit to the forest, typically staying for about six months. In recent years, they have even welcomed ten calves into the forest during their stay.

 Hard work never goes unnoticed, his efforts came to light in 2008 when forest department officials went to the area in search of 115 elephants that had taken shelter in the forest after wrecking some property in the village Aruna Chapori about 1.5 km from the forest. 

It came as a shock to the officials the size and depth of the forest and so they started making regular visits. 

His awards & honors 

• In April 2012, Jadav Payeng was honored at an event by the School of Environmental Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University. During an interactive session, he shared his journey of creating a forest. Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh and JNU vice-chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory attended, and Sopory gave him the title "Forest Man of India."

• In October 2013, Payeng was honored by the Indian Institute of Forest Management at their annual event, Coalescence.

• In 2015, he was awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award.

• He has also received honorary doctorates from Assam Agricultural University and Kaziranga University for his environmental contributions.

Adaptations of his work  

Jadav Payeng’s incredible efforts in reforesting the land have inspired several documentaries. One such film is Kaadan, directed by Prabhu Solomon and starring Rana Daggubati, which tells a fictionalized version of Payeng’s story. Released in Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi, the movie helped raise awareness of his environmental work.

 Another important documentary, The Molai Forest was produced by filmmaker Jitu Kalita. It was screened at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2012, highlighting Payeng’s life and his dedication to creating a forest from scratch.

 In 2013, director Aarti Shrivastava made Foresting Life a documentary that focuses on Payeng’s journey and the impact he has had on the Molai Forest. At the same time, filmmaker William Douglas McMaster released Forest Man, a documentary that gained support through a Kickstarter campaign. It went on to win the Best Documentary award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, helping to bring Payeng’s story to an international audience.

Jadav Payeng’s life has also been shared through children’s books. In 2016, Jadav and the Tree-Place, written by Vinayak Varma, was published. The book has been translated into 39 languages and has won several awards.

In 2019, another children’s book called The Boy Who Grew A Forest was released, written by Sophia Gholz. It has also won prestigious awards and made Payeng’s inspiring story accessible to children and families worldwide, encouraging them to value environmental conservation.

His message to the world

In a YouTube video by COP28 UAE, he said, “You need to take action. Then the world will become green sooner. Then we can survive. In 1959, there was a devastating flood, and a lot of garbage turned into sand. Erosion ended everything here. All this was dry sand. When the snakes died, my heart was filled with grief for them. I started in the year 1979, and I planted bamboo and due to that people from the Deori community came and stayed near me. They brought 50 bamboo stumps and gave them to me. Then I brought 50 earthen pots. And then i continued planting and it took 30 years to return into a forest. Due to which, lots of deer came here. Deer came, and tigers, rhinos, and elephants came. This is how this forest was created. It is not enough to plant trees - we need to take care and make them grow. So I hope the new generation should not only plant trees, they should care for them, make them grow, and know their benefits and names. All the 8 billion people of this world are my own, teaching them to love the earth is my job and that is what I’m doing.”

Molai is eager to improve the management of his forest and hopes to expand his efforts by creating similar green spaces in other areas of the state. His next goal is to extend his forestation work to another sandbar within the Brahmaputra River.