Its biggest plantation drive was organised in the
Dehra Dun district of Uttarakhand where the company got together with 35,000 families from 36 gram panchayats and 15 wards in the region and planted over 210,000 trees.
Speaking of good soldiers and politics, it is apt to quote the advice of Field Marshal Philip Chetwode to the first batch of Indian cadets, when he inaugurated the Indian Military Academy at
Dehra Dun in 1932.
He was commissioned into the Royal Nepal Army in 1952 and graduated from the Indian Military Academy,
Dehra Dun, in 1954.
He served at various levels in the Indian Forest Service and as Professor of Forestry in Himachal Pradesh University, Director of the Conifer Research Centre in Simla, President of the Forest Research Institute at
Dehra Dun, and finally as Director General of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education.
Retired Brig Malik Mukhtar Karim, who was Mr Catchpole's student at the Rashtriya Indian Military College in
Dehra Dun India, was the chief guest
He had long been interested in military affairs, particularly the induction of Indians into British Indian regiments as officers, either after having been cadets at Sandhurst (like Ayub and Yahya...), or at
Dehra Dun (like Zia...) when it was founded.
Devi Prasad was born in 1921 at
Dehra Dun, and joined Kala Bhavana as a student in 1938.
But when I reached
Dehra Dun, I saw a huge crowd had gathered to wish him and realised I was just another person and not a son.
Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist, in 1982, she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in
Dehra Dun, in 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, and in 2004 she started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley in collaboration with Schumacher College, U.K.
In India, the inhabitants of
Dehra Dun live below the poverty threshold.
On my most recent trip, I spent two weeks documenting the daily activities of two Islamic madrassas in the city of
Dehra Dun in northern India, plus an Islamic women's sewing group and the Hindu pilgrimage destination of Rishikesh.
He offered me a free pass and I declined, because I had to board the coach that evening for Mussorie, via
Dehra Dun, and certainly, I would be uncomfortable sitting with sleazy politicians and appearing like a flunky, clapping when everyone clapped.