It is heartening that the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) will sow lakhs of plants on a stretch of 26 kilometres in the barren hills of Vellore this year, to reduce the temperature in the town by more than 3 degrees. In the late forties, when I was studying in Vellore Voorhees College there were lots of mango trees and flowering plants at the foothills stretching from Satuvachari to beyond Salavanpettai. The mountains were dotted with ponds with sweet water.

In the evening students used to play volleyball and tennis in the valley surrounded on three sides by steep hills. In the early fifties, when I left Vellore to Chennai for a job, I used to return often on official assignment. Then I found lights at night, through the whole hill and was told that some development was in the offing to make it a picnic centre. But then, to my disappointment, nothing happened and even the patches of greenery dwindled making Vellore mountain a barren hill, radiating excruciating heat during summer. Comparing Vellore mountains with other stretches like the Vijayawada mountain, where the famous Kanakadurga temple is located, I used to think wistfully of the days of my youth when I lived there.

This wonderful job undertaken by VIT should be emulated all over the country. If all the barren hills in India are greened, the sun’s radiation will decrease, the atmosphere will be cooled, rainfall will increase, and the ozone layer will improve. Tree varieties like neem, ashoka and casuarina grow in any condition. If the project is started now, it will yield fruit in about ten years. Besides linking all Indian rivers and constructing dams, if this project of nurturing our hills is also given importance, India will have an idyllic future.