Dr. Jitendra Singh plants sapling under PM Modi's Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam
Synopsis
Key Takeaways
A tree planted in a mother's name — that is the simple, enduring idea at the heart of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam campaign, and on Monday, 26 October 2026, Union Science and Technology Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh joined that movement at Lok Nayak Bhawan, New Delhi, the home of the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW).
Dr. Singh carried out the plantation in the name of his own mother, calling it a privilege — 'सौभाग्य' [a matter of good fortune] — to participate. He also appealed to everyone present to join the campaign and make it their own.
The campaign rooting across India's ministries
Launched by PM Modi, the Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam ('One Tree in Mother's Name') initiative asks every citizen — and every government servant — to plant a sapling and dedicate it to their mother, weaving personal emotion into a national afforestation push. The premise is deliberate: a tree tied to a mother's memory is a tree someone is likely to protect.
Senior ministers and officials leading the drive on departmental premises has become a visible pattern — turning routine office compounds into green pledges. The DoPPW event is part of that steady, ministry-by-ministry rollout across central government offices.
Why a pension department, and why it matters
The choice of Lok Nayak Bhawan — which houses the pension welfare department and serves thousands of retired government employees — is not incidental. Retired civil servants represent a constituency with deep institutional loyalty, and engaging them in a green campaign multiplies its social reach well beyond active service. A planted sapling here carries both symbolic and practical weight.
India's afforestation goals depend on exactly this kind of decentralised, emotionally anchored mobilisation — not just large-scale forestry projects, but millions of individual acts that add up. One tree, one name, one department at a time.