The Greening of Telangana
In 2015, the year-old state set itself a target that sounded like poetry and was budgeted like infrastructure: raise Telangana's green cover from 24 percent of its land to 33 percent. The programme was called Telangana Ku Haritha Haram, a garland of green for Telangana. Eight years and 273 crore saplings later, India ranked Telangana first in the country for increase in forest cover, and Hyderabad carried home a World Green City Award.
Haritha Haram was launched in 2015 as one of the new state's flagship programmes, with a working method as unglamorous as its ambition was large: nurseries in every corner of the state, saplings raised by the crore, and a planting season every monsoon, year after year, phase after phase. The original target was 230 crore saplings. By May 2023 the state had planted 273.33 crore, beyond the target, with expenditure on the greening programme reaching Rs.10,822.46 crore by 2022. For the ninth phase alone, in the monsoon of 2023, 30.29 crore plants stood ready in 14,864 nurseries against a target of 19.29 crore. Telangana also became the first state in the country to establish a dedicated green fund, the Telangana Harita Nidhi.
Did It Work? The Measurements Say Yes
Tree-planting programmes are easy to announce and hard to verify, which is why the external measurements matter. Forest cover outside the state's recorded forest areas (the plantations, the avenues, the village and farm greenery that Haritha Haram existed to create) rose from 1,727 square kilometres in 2015 to 2,518 square kilometres. In 2023, Telangana was ranked the No.1 state in India for increase in forest cover, the only state scoring above seven out of ten. And in 2022, Hyderabad won the AIPH World Green City Award, international recognition for a capital that a decade earlier had been known for its traffic, not its trees.
The Urban Garland
The urban component of Haritha Haram rebuilt the green estate of Telangana's towns street by street. The Hyderabad metropolitan authority planted 14 crore saplings, raised 2,735 nurseries, greened 950 kilometres of avenues and developed 5,926 hectares of urban forests at a cost of Rs.754 crore. Across the state's 141 urban local bodies, municipal administration planted another 11 crore saplings and greened 19,866 kilometres of avenues, developing 541 hectares of Pattana Prakruthi Vanalu, urban nature parks. The city corporation of Hyderabad added 7 crore plantings of its own, along with 565 parks, some twenty Panchatatva parks and 103 open gyms. Around the capital, 188 urban forest blocks covering 1,60,660 acres were identified, with 59 of them (59,522 acres) under development as full urban forest parks.
Haritha Haram at a Glance
- Launched 2015; goal: raise green cover from 24 percent to 33 percent of the state's geographical area.
- 273.33 crore saplings planted by May 2023, against a 230 crore target; Rs.10,822.46 crore spent by 2022.
- Telangana Harita Nidhi: the country's first dedicated state green fund.
- Forest cover outside recorded forest areas up from 1,727 sq km (2015) to 2,518 sq km.
- 2023: ranked India's No.1 state for increase in forest cover, the only state scoring above 7 out of 10.
- 2022: Hyderabad wins the AIPH World Green City Award.
- Urban forests: 188 blocks over 1,60,660 acres identified around Hyderabad; 59 developed as urban forest parks across 59,522 acres.
The greening belongs in this chapter for the same reason the districts, the power lines and the welfare systems do: it is what a government does when it plans in decades rather than election cycles. A sapling planted in 2015 gives its shade to a citizen of 2045. Haritha Haram was the new state, quite literally, planting for a Telangana its founders would not live to sit under.
