A tree for every day — that is the personal pledge Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has kept going, and on Saturday, 25 October 2026, he honoured it on the campus of SAGE University, Bhopal, just before presiding over a Rural Self Employment Training Institute (RSETI) credit-linkage ceremony designed to extend financial independence to women from rural Madhya Pradesh.

Posting under his signature #OnePlantADay campaign, Chouhan shared that the sapling was planted ahead of the rin sahbaddhata samaroh — the loan-linkage ceremony — organised under the RSETI umbrella for 'bahano aur betiyon ke swablamban hetu' (the self-reliance of sisters and daughters). The dual staging was deliberate: one act for the earth, one for its people.

BJP legislators join the green pledge in Bhopal

Chouhan was not alone. Joining him on the SAGE University grounds were Vidisha MLA Mukesh Tandon, Budhni MLA Ramakant, Bhojpur MLA Surendra Patwa, former minister Rampal Singh, and Raisen BJP district president Rakesh Sharma, along with party workers. The cluster of local legislators signals that the daily-planting initiative is being actively socialised as a collective BJP campaign across Madhya Pradesh constituencies, not merely a ministerial photo opportunity.

RSETI's credit-linkage work for rural women

The credit-linkage ceremony at the heart of the event matters beyond symbolism. RSETIs — Rural Self Employment Training Institutes — were launched nationally in 2009 under the Ministry of Rural Development to bridge the gap between skill training and bank credit for rural youth and women. Their model: train a beneficiary, then connect her directly to a formal bank loan, eliminating the intermediary guesswork. The Bhopal event sits in that lineage — women who have completed skill training are formally handed bank-linked credit, turning a certificate into capital.

A decades-long plantation legacy, now a daily ritual

Chouhan's relationship with large-scale tree planting stretches back to his tenures as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh — a state that conducted multiple headline-grabbing plantation drives, including a 2019 campaign that drew national attention for its claimed scale. Since moving to the Union cabinet, he has reframed that legacy into a personal daily commitment, calling nature 'maa samaan' — 'like a mother' — in his appeal to followers to plant what he describes as 'a sapling of life', and to enrich both the earth's greenery and one's own existence.

The twin agenda of Saturday's event — green cover and women's economic agency — is a pattern Chouhan has leaned into consistently: use a ceremonial moment to stitch environment and rural welfare into a single frame, giving both causes amplification they might not separately command.

The bigger test will be whether the daily saplings and the RSETI credit camps translate into measurable canopy cover and self-employment numbers ahead of the next monsoon season — because in rural India, the ground tells a more honest story than any stage.