This former marketing executive is building eco-friendly homes and reviving farmlands in rural Uttarakhand
Shagun Singh, a 36-year-old former marketing executive and environmentalist, heads the Geeli Mitti Foundation, a social enterprise involved in reviving 11 tracts of farmland, each comprising three to five acres. She also helps to build mud houses using the earth-bag technique.
If you come across any construction site for a house, you will see cement bags and bricks piled up. Not many of us know that building materials like cement and red sand bricks aren’t sustainable and cannot be decomposed. However, most construction companies continue to use them.
But 36-year-old-Shagun Singh wants to change these practices and make a difference. She started a social enterprise, The Geeli Mitti Foundation, under which she has established the Geeli Mitti Farms, eco-friendly and sustainable living spaces owned by the foundation.
Located in Mahrora Village, a hilly region in Pangot (roughly 25 km from Uttarakhand’s Nainital), Shagun is making a difference by making houses out of mud, cow dung, and lime.
In a conversation with She The People, Shagun said,
“Mud has a lot of thermal power. By thermal power, I mean that it can absorb heat and cold for a very long period. Many don’t value its potential now.”
The farms also recycles the trash generated. According to Shagun, all the houses are made from four techniques.
She explained,
“The earth-bag technique is extremely important. It is highly beneficial for earthquake-prone areas. Many people don’t know that during the Nepal earthquake, in one area, only one building kept standing while the others collapsed. It was because of the earth-bag technique that it was built with.”
Besides the sustainability factor, Shagun believes that these housing structures would also bring in spiritual energies, which an individual can feel while residing inside.
Shagun believes that cement structures cannot breathe and with this if you lock a house for nearly a decade, you can feel the toxicity of pollutants once you enter. But in the case of a mud house, mud walls are capable of breathing, hence they help maintain some air flow.
Shagun is also involved in reviving the lives of many rural farmers through specialised farming techniques, and her permaculture farm. She works with a team of 30 students, volunteers, and interns who help her redesign the 11 farms.
The area has seen many changes with rainwater harvesting, revival of local ponds, and introduction of plant diversity. Farmers have also begun to grown crops like wheat, ragi and peas.
Speaking to Hindustan Times on her future plans, Shagun said,
“We are planning to dig little ponds near the farms to harvest rainwater in the coming monsoon and sustain local fish, which is an additional source of income.”
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