Meet 54-Year-Old Peepal Baba Who Has Planted Over Two Crore Trees Over The Last Four Decades

Peepal Baba is the right name for this green warrior who walks the environment talk and hasn’t stopped even during the lockdown.

Clear, blue skies, cleaner lakes and rivers, chirping birds in the heart of the concrete jungle and dolphins at Marine Drive have been some of the positive sides of the pandemic outbreak and lockdown. While most people stayed indoors and almost everything came to an abrupt halt over the last few months, this man never gave up his passion for planting trees and keeping nature going. Meet Swami Prem Parivartan, 54, more popularly known as Peepal Baba, a name he has earned for planting over two crore trees in the last 44 years. And guess what, he keeps a count on all of them and maintains an old book that records each of the trees that he has planted.

Founded in 2011, Parivartan runs an NGO – Give Me Trees Trust that has 30 full-time workers helping him in his endeavour. He has planted trees in 202 districts covering 18 states like Uttar Pradesh, Delhi – NCR, Haryana, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. He also supports 14,000 volunteers in the country. He trains communities in planting and maintaining trees in specific areas.

Since childhood, Parivartan has been an environment lover. He often spoke about the importance of the environment with his teachers and grandmother who was a nature lover as well. At the age of 10, he was saddened to hear from his teacher that the rivers would dry up in the future due to climate change, global warming and increasing pollution. When he shared his concern with his grandmom, she asked him to plant a tree. That’s how his journey began. He went to a nursery, bought nine plants and planted them along the Range Hill Road, Khadki Cantonment, Pune.

Parivartan worked as an English education officer in various companies while planting trees side by side until he completely dedicated himself to planting and taking care of the trees. He also started taking tuitions for livelihood with full support from his family.

For the last two decades, he has been planting trees across the country, making Delhi his base camp. Very recently amid the Coronavirus outbreak, he visited Haridwar to get saplings and ended up in planting 1064 trees in the surrounding villages during the lockdown. Not just in Haridwar, he has carried his plantation drive in Lucknow, Noida and Delhi as well, planting as many as 8064 trees during the Coronavirus crisis till now.

Parivartan and his band of tree warriors do not just plant trees and take care of them but also keep track of each tree they have planted. 1.25 billion trees out of two crore trees that he has planted are Neem and Peepal is why he has earned the moniker ‘Peepal Baba’. Others include guava, berries, tamarind and other trees suiting the various places.

He believes that while he cannot reduce the number of people cutting the trees, he can certainly increase the number of people planting trees. The 54-year-old hardly takes a break from planting trees and promises to continue doing that and encouraging more people to join his tribe.

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