Chami Devi Murmu: Jharkhand’s ‘lady Tarzan’

Chami Devi Murmu aka The Lady Tarzan of Jharkhand, India. A native of Barisai village of Jharkhand she is on a mission to save wildlife and improve the forest cover in her state. The forest in this region has vastly diminished because of Timber Mafia and Naxal insurgency. It is one of the most- backward regions of the country because of limited livelihood opportunities as agriculture is not sustainable due to intermittent rainfall. Moreover due to The Red Movement started by Naxals in the area a large amount of people are engaged in anti-social activities
This led to the vast destruction of forest. According to the Forest Department estimate around 50% of forest cover has depleted over a period of two decades i.e. around 50 lack-hectares of land. Chami started her movement some 24 years back by engaging the local women to plant trees like Sal, Eucalyptus and Acacia to protect the depleted forest cover. She says that in her village forest is the main source of livelihood and she was able to engage some 3000 women to join part in the movement by forming a Self-help Group [SHG]. The job of this group is plant trees all over the barren place and to protect the trees from cutting.
The movement is quite risky because of the threats from Timber Mafia and also from Naxals operating in the area. But she is quite determined to take forward the crusade. Kudos to her movement cause through her efforts she was able to plant around a million trees in the area.
Chami Devi Murmu, is fondly called the ‘Lady Tarzan of Jharkhand’, not because she has befriended tigers in the Muturkham Chaura and Kadel Pahar jungles of Saraikela-Kharsawan district.

She is on a mission to protect the local wildlife by saving the forests that have been fast vanishing due to the havoc caused by the timber mafia and Naxal insurgency in the area.

A native of Barisai village in Jharkhand, it has taken Chami nearly 24 years to mobilise women from over 40 villages to plant sal, eucalyptus and Acacia trees, among others, to replenish the heavily depleted green cover. Chami’s eco-brigade of over 3,000 self-help group (SHG) women has planted more than a million trees and has also developed watersheds to help raise the ground water levels in the region.

“Trees are our lives. They fulfil our very real needs for firewood and food and so I thought why not I become the saviour of our lifesavers,” said a confident Chami, adding, “Our network of women is so strong that we immediately come to know where a tree is being chopped. Our organisation, the Sahyogi Mahila group, a cluster of various SHGs, now plants trees and also protects them.”

The Santhal woman said, “Jharkhand means ‘the land of forests’ and in our local language it also means ‘a piece of gold’. For me, our forests are gold and we need to preserve them.”

Neither did the Naxals nor the initial oppositions by locals deterred Chami Devi from doing what she had determined. From being a simple Adivasi girl, she has earned the title of being the Tarzan lady and it's because of her efforts that the forests near Jamshedpur are only becoming greener and greener. What started as a result of one person has now become movement of a sort. As Chami's followers grow, the challenges at hand are also increasing. The region is notorious not only for Naxals, but the timber mafia too. Protecting these trees is a priority. But Chami’s initiative could well become a model for protecting the 23 lakh hectares of Jharkhand's rich jungle cover
.