 There is a famous saying in Tamil that goes like this This literally translates to do your duty without any expectation of the result The success story of the Yedaykal social forestry initiative exemplifies this saying See this social forestry initiative was taken up by Mr. Ashok Vardhan Shetty In 1994 when he was the collector of the Vilupuram district of Tamil Nadu But later he got transferred and this social forestry initiative fell into neglect But after 28 years this social forestry initiative has turned into Yedaykal mini forest Now this mini forest is steaming with various flora and fauna But what is social forestry? Social forestry literally means the development of forests outside the conventional forest The ultimate aim is to provide a continuous flow of goods and services for the needs of the local people Social forestry encourages to make use of unused barren lands Here those barren lands are turned into mini forest with the help of the local communities So this helps in safeguarding the deeper conventional forest from exploitation Mostly fast growing trees are planted to meet the needs of food and fuel food for the local community The concept of social forestry has its origins in the teachings of Buddhism And according to Buddhism every good Buddhist was required to plant a tree and take care of it Since 1976 the government of India has been implementing various projects for the development of barren lands With various social forestry projects. This is all about social forestry The success story that is recently in news is actually a success story of former IAS officer K Ashok Vardhan Shetty Because it is Mr K Ashok Vardhan Shetty who initially set up the forest The officer said in 1994 the garden was set up at a place called Yedaykal in Vilupram district of Tamil Nadu When he was the collector of Vilupram district. He said that he got his inspiration from the Kew Gardens of London The Kew Garden is supposed to have a sample of every type of tree plant and shrub found anywhere in the world In a Kew Garden special agro climatic conditions have also been created artificially This enabled exotic species to grow in London. Now coming back with the inspiration from the Kew Gardens The officer sought to create a mini Kew Garden It was planned to create a large extent of more than 500 acres of barren government land in Yedaykal village Then he used the funds given by the government of India for the social forestry program And he delegated the work to the district's forest department around 250 varieties of flora were planted This include various species of trees plants and shrub and scurves which are native to Tamil Nadu He said in late 1994 he got transferred and the Indian government also stopped the funding for the social forestry scheme in 1996 So the garden was neglected But the effort he put in did not go in vain. Despite neglect now in 28 years The area has become a dense mini forest and it is now a home to fauna like deer, mongoose and snakes This is all about the success story Yedaykal mini forest in Vilupram district Now let us see what are all the issues prevalent in implementing such type of innovative projects Firstly the officer who is trying to implement his innovative idea is not given long tenure And that hampers the progress of the scheme. The second important issue is the predecessor successor scheme Here the successor will not carry forward the predecessor's initiative until and unless there is a government backing Thirdly the continuous changing nature of government policies affects the funding to the project And finally there is the issue of poor operation and maintenance of the projects that are undertaken This also affects the progress of the initiative To know more about innovative success stories like this, please listen to daily news analysis by Shankarayesh akademi and subscribe to Shankarayesh akademi's youtube channel Thank you for listening