The Jamun Tree and other stories on the environment provides an insider s view from the villages, of work related to natural resource management. It describes the process by which farmers were motivated and involved to regard the work to be done as their own. It is a narration of the personal experience of people in those village areas where the author worked.  Starting the endeavour with just 95 farmers on a mere 18 hectares land, the programme has benefitted over 10,000 farmers by reclaiming over 4,600 hectares in just two years. Till date, with the intervention of the World Bank, a total of 6.25 lakh hectares has been reclaimed and the work is still on. The action taken found an echo with local people as it followed the need of the hour, right there in the field, with innovative techniques and new ideas. Key features: An insider's view of work related to natural resource management and community development - Establishes one of the most important tenets of development studies: involvement of people in the decision-making process is the key to any development initiative - Reinforces the importance of a bottom-up approach of development initiatives - Emphasizes the significance of adequate capacity-building of people - The data accounted for is original and the experiences in most cases, are the author s own - The narrative is in a story-telling pattern, though most of the incidents and people are from real life Contents: People emerged from the shadows - Bangles for sale - The cascading water danced away - People move at their own pace The Jamun Tree is a collection of four stories that take us, in turn, to villages of the central Indo-Gangetic plains, the dry expanse of Kutch, the Saurashtra plateau and finally, to the hills of Kumaon. Each region is entirely different from the rest, whether in terms of culture or of natural resources. What brings them together in this book, is that each is the location of long-standing efforts to enable local communities to improve the management of land and water resources. This book is quite unlike conventional development literature. It is not the academic perspective of a geo-hydrologist, sociologist or economist. Neither is it the perspective of a project manager who analyses goals, objectives and strategies. Rather, it a beautifully narrated account of a development worker who crosses paths with a multitude of real people with real lives. Each story is worth sharing for the human dimension it portrays, quite apart from the professional insights it may offer. And as the reader accompanies Prema, a thinly disguised version of the author, on her journey, this human dimension is what embodies The Jamun Tree. One of the many themes of the book is how diverse people come together: men and women, landless labourers and poor farmers. Those at the receiving end of development programmes, only rarely get a chance to speak their mind, let alone decide what is best for them. And when they do, the results can be quite dramatic. For many of them, taking part in a programme is often a huge act of faith that defies logic and reason. It takes a gifted development worker to build upon this faith and enable people to collectively achieve what they cannot individually. Prema is fortunate to work along with such gifted people, and to learn first hand what it takes to foster collective action. And in the process, the occasional failure is just as instructive as the many successes that come her way. We also discover that Prema has a special interest in drawing upon local government support. She introduces us to a wide range of officials, some skeptical, some indifferent, and some enthusiastic. Whatever their outlook, she seeks novel means to bridge the considerable gap between officialdom and the rural community. This often leads her into perplexing situations. But thanks to her persistence, she finds that most officials show a genuine desire to be a part of change for the better. Unlike the purely objective, impersonal report, The Jamun Tree chooses to name the players in the development process, and to capture their hopes and dreams, tears and fears, and mirth and laughter. There is, for instance, an agitated Kheri, who hits his own head with a brick in a fit of anger, only to quietly subside by the very next morning; a Pradhanan who gives Prema a lift on her tractor and casually reveals that she shot the man who had killed her husband; little 12 year old Sapna who bursts into tears on the day of her marriage, as she wants to go to school instead; Ganga behn, the frail widow whose sole possessions are a couple of utensils and a spoon; the dashing rabari Vanka Deva, who happily prefers a life of roaming the desert under the open sky, to settling down like other people; Shanta behn who unhesitatingly introduces Prema to a visitor as her own sister; Hansi devi who is concerned at the meager stock of food in Prema s fridge; and Puran Joshi who finally succumbs to several months persuas