Chatakpur Siding is one of those anonymous bunch of houses that whiz by when you are on your way to more well-known destinations. The people of the village flanking the National Highway 55, which connects the hill town of Darjeeling with the plains, lived a life in which the ends never seemed to meet. Dependent on tiny vegetable plots for their livelihood-wild boars often made a mess of their family economics-the 32 households there supplemented their meagre resources by stealing off into the adjoining Kurseong reserve forest and illegally chopping down trees to sell as firewood.

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COLOUR OF SUCCESS: A DEG flower project shows its results

This life of penury came to the notice of some not-so-young eco enthusiasts around four years ago. They decided not only to wean the villagers away from depleting the forest resources but also show them a way out of their poverty. Aided by the Darjeeling Earth Group (DEG), Chatakpur Siding, 23 km from Darjeeling, is today on a surer footing with its inhabitants selling vegetables and flowers, making compost for sale, growing medicinal plants as well as managing community resources. Illicit tree-felling has stopped to a large extent.

The DEG, a social organisation with a strong focus on conservation and sustainable development of natural resources, has as its main movers people who should have been resting on their laurels. But the retired lawyers, forest officers, tea-garden executives and army officers, teamed with younger people from diverse fields, refuse to leave things to others. The DEG has big successes in projects similar to Chatakpur. In fact, its social enterprise project at Rampuria village near Takdah, around 25 km from Darjeeling, has been the model not only for its own schemes but for governmental and non-governmental agencies dealing with similar issues.

DEG provides indigent villagers with seed money and know-how to cultivate flowers, ginger, pepper and medicinal plants without using chemical fertilisers. A percentage of the profits accruing to the people is rolled back into other projects. Says D.S. Rasaily, 75, retired lawyer and secretary of DEG: "Our main aim is to maintain the biodiversity balance. But we also keep social development in mind. In most of our projects, the involvement of women is as high as 40 per cent."

Despite its dependence on grants and donations, the DEG has wrought small miracles in the lives of wretched people. With more donor-partners, it knows it can make dreams come true for the economically disadvantaged.

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