Sadhguru: We camped at Mettur dam and also the KRS dam in Mysore, that is the part
of the country that’s very familiar to me and I’ve spent a lot of time as a child and a youth
along the Cauvery there. The dam is to the brim, actually overflowing. KRS dam is one-twenty-four
feet eight inches and overflowing. Whenever breeze blows, it is overflowing over the dam.
One lakh cusecs were being let out - initially three lakh cusecs and then one lakh cusecs were
being let out on a daily basis but in spite of that it was overflowing; so was Mettur dam,
hundred-and-twenty feet full. So, I asked the local guy who is living there, next to the dam,
I asked him, “In how many days did it fill up?” He said, “Four days.” I said, “This is not good.”
If it rains heavily in Coorg, it would always take anywhere between twenty to thirty days to fill up,
that’s a good thing, but now it’s filling up in four days. So for the first time… In fifty years,
for the first time I’m seeing that the KRS dam is brown in color - full,
but brown in color. This means the soil of the mountains is coming to Mysore city,
which is not a good thing. Cauvery should come walking, but she’s running, this is the problem.
We need to understand; the same amount of rain is coming in the last one hundred years - the average
is same. Our only problem is we’re not able to sequester the water that comes down in the
form of rain - we’re not able to put it into the soil mainly because there is no organic content
and there’s not enough trees and vegetation. If we plant these two-hundred-and-forty-two crore trees,
we can sequester anywhere between nine to twelve trillion liters of water.
To give you a perspective of what is twelve trillion, the entire flow of Cauvery right now
is 21.2 trillion liters. So twelve trillion liters extra if it goes into the land, the rivers - all
the hundred-and-twenty rivers will flow, your lakes will be full, your wells will be full,
above all soil will be damp most of the year and that is what is needed. For the state and the
nation if you want a solution - the maximum land owner on the planet is the farmer still - it is he
who has to go for it. Why will he go for it? You want him to save the world, you want him to save
Cauvery, you want him to save the nation? No, he is right now struggling for his livelihood. Now,
the only way it will work is that it must be an economic plan for him - this is what I’ve been
looking at for over twenty-five years - now we know hundred percent. This is not an experiment
on the farmer, we know hundred percent, his life will change dramatically (Applause).
Right now if you ask any farmer - you can do a survey and see if you
want - not even two percent of the farmers want their children to become farmers. So,
in another twenty-five years when this generation passes, how do you think you’re going to grow
food? The most significant achievement in the country is, without any technology,
without any modern science, just with traditional wisdom, our farmer is growing food for 1.4 billion
people (Applause). This is not a small thing. This is the greatest achievement for this nation, but
unfortunately their condition right now is very, very bad - everybody knows about the suicides and
the stuff. This is a game changer for the farmer, for the soil, and water, and for everybody. If
thirty-three percent of farmers or thirty-three percent of the land goes into agroforestry,
we have calculated, by eighth year, the government will be earning 29,000 crores of GST (Applause).
So, it is wonderful for the farmer, it is wonderful for the governments, and the
governments are responding very responsibly, the farmer is very enthusiastic. Now the civil society
is our business to see somehow we grow healthy saplings for the framer. Two-hundred-and-forty-two
crores is a lot of saplings. There is no one department in the government,
there is no one private agency or a commercial force, which can grow this kind of number. And
another problem is to grow quality saplings. When I say quality saplings - right now we
have thirty-five nurseries you know, happening in Tamil Nadu - these thirty-five nurseries,
we take nine to fifteen months to grow a sapling for transplantation. Many commercial nurseries
are growing the same saplings in three to five months because they use lot of urea and grow
it - we’re growing it organically. What is the difference? The difference is just this,
when transplantation happens, the survival rate is over ninety-five percent and in that the survival
rate is around forty percent. And recently the Agricultural University of Tamil Nadu,
TNAU in Coimbatore, which is a premier institution in the country, invited forty different saplings
producers in the state - the Isha nurseries also went - and of the forty samples that came,
all the thirty-nine of them had nematode deposits on their roots. The only one without
nematode deposits was from our nurseries (Applause). This is very important because,
when you shift the farmer into tree framing, suppose you give him bad saplings, which will
not produce the result that we are promising him, then you are pushing him further into a horrible
situation - another corner. So this is extremely important. This is why this forty-two-rupee
campaign is going on. This will need a minimum of twelve-year commitment. Are you with me?
Participant: Yes (Applause)!