They lost their husbands to tiger attacks in the Sundarbans — and then turned back to the same forest for survival. Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday, September 27, 2026, shared a striking story from Jharkali, where widowed women are growing mangrove forests, earning livelihoods, and building a natural shield for their villages — all at once.

Sharing the story in the context of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's monthly radio programme Mann Ki Baat, Chouhan wrote: 'The women of Jharkali are preparing mangrove forests. Most of them are women whose husbands lost their lives in tiger attacks. After losing their husbands, they found a means of livelihood from the Sundarbans itself. The mangroves planted by them are today becoming a natural protective shield for villages — and by planting them, these women are also earning income.'

Widows of the Sundarbans, guardians of its coast

The Sundarbans — the world's largest mangrove delta, straddling West Bengal and Bangladesh — is a UNESCO-recognised ecosystem and the home of the Royal Bengal Tiger. It is also a zone of chronic human-wildlife conflict, where fishermen and honey-collectors venturing into the forest have long faced fatal tiger attacks, leaving behind communities of widows with few economic options.

The Jharkali initiative threads together what policymakers have long struggled to stitch: conservation and welfare, grief and income, ecology and equity. By cultivating mangroves — plants that anchor coastlines against cyclone surges and erosion — these women are simultaneously healing a damaged ecosystem and creating a paying occupation for themselves.

MISHTI scheme: the policy backdrop these roots grow in

The story lands inside a broader national push. The Union Budget 2023 introduced the MISHTI (Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats and Tangible Incomes) scheme, specifically designed to promote mangrove plantation along India's coastline, linking ecological restoration to rural employment. The Sundarbans, as India's most ecologically significant mangrove zone, sits at the centre of that ambition.

India has increasingly treated mangrove restoration as a nature-based solution to coastal resilience — a low-cost, high-return buffer against the intensifying cyclone seasons that batter the Bay of Bengal coast. Tying that ecological mission to the livelihoods of the very communities most exposed to the forest's dangers makes the Jharkali model particularly compelling.

Mann Ki Baat as a grassroots megaphone

Mann Ki Baat, PM Modi's monthly radio address, has consistently used such ground-level stories — women-led conservation, self-help group enterprise, tribal innovation — to spotlight what the government frames as the convergence of welfare and environment goals. Chouhan's post amplifies that signal, bringing the Jharkali women's work to a national political audience in a single share.

The image it leaves is a hard one to forget: women who have every reason to fear the forest choosing instead to tend it, root by root, and in doing so, holding the shoreline together.