On a winter morning in Madhya Pradesh, a group of schoolchildren stands silently beneath a forest canopy. A forest guard crouches beside the trail and traces a shape on the ground with a stick. It is the outline of a pugmark—broad, asymmetrical, unmistakable. The children don’t see a tiger that day, but they learn something more fundamental: forests are not spaces meant to perform for humans. They communicate quietly, through signs, balance, and absence.
This moment is part of Anubhuti, a long-running environmental education—a flagship programme of the Madhya Pradesh forest department implemented through the Madhya Pradesh Ecotourism Development Board. Begun in 2016 and resumed annually after a pause during the COVID-19 years, Anubhuti brings school students—mostly from government schools—into forests to learn about biodiversity, conservation, and coexistence through direct experience rather than classroom instruction. As environmental education climbs policy agendas in India, Anubhuti offers a rare, large-scale attempt to place forests themselves at the centre of learning.
Environmental studies are mandatory in Indian schools, yet learning often remains abstract and detached from lived landscapes. Concepts such as food chains, climate change, and biodiversity loss are frequently taught without physical reference points—especially in rural and forest-adjacent regions where children live closest to ecological change.
This disconnect has real consequences. In many forest landscapes, young people grow up perceiving wildlife only through conflict narratives—crop raids, livestock losses, restrictions on forest access—rather than as integral components of ecosystems.
Anubhuti was designed to counter this distance. Its premise is simple but ambitious: environmental sensitivity grows when children encounter nature directly, guided by those who work in it daily.
Rather than delivering lectures, the programme relies on structured forest exposure: guided nature walks, wildlife sign interpretation, interactive discussions, games, storytelling, and reflection. Students are taught how to observe—not just what to know.
Every Anubhuti cycle is anchored in a theme. For 2025-26, the programme is being conducted under the composite theme “Main bhi baagh, hum hain badlaav, hum hain dharti ke doot”—I too am the tiger; we are the change; we are messengers of the Earth.
The first phrase, “Main bhi baagh,” is particularly striking. In India’s conservation discourse, the tiger is often positioned as a symbol of national pride or as a source of conflict in human-dominated landscapes. Anubhuti reframes this relationship by asking children to identify with the animal rather than view it as ‘other’.
In practice, this identification is not symbolic alone. Trainers explain the ecological role of apex predators, how forest degradation impacts both animals and people, and why fear-driven narratives can deepen conflict rather than resolve it.
By extending the theme to “Hum hain badlaav” and “hum hain dharti ke doot,” the programme shifts responsibility outward. Children are encouraged to see themselves as active participants in conservation ethics, not passive recipients of information.
Anubhuti camps follow a carefully structured one-day format, typically organised in forest or ecotourism landscapes. The day begins with orientation—introducing the objectives of the programme, forest etiquette, safety norms, and codes of conduct. Silence, patience, and observation are emphasised early, marking a clear departure from conventional school excursions.
Guided nature walks form the core of the experience. Students learn to recognise trees, understand forest layers, identify birds by sound, and interpret indirect signs of wildlife such as pugmarks, scats, scratch marks, or feeding traces. These moments are used to introduce key ecological concepts: interdependence, food webs, habitat connectivity, and balance.
Post-walk sessions focus on interaction rather than instruction. Through games, quizzes, group discussions, and role-play, children explore themes like climate change, water conservation, human-wildlife coexistence, and responsible behaviour. Creative elements—drawing, storytelling, songs, and short plays—are often used to help children process their experiences.
The day usually ends with a collective environmental pledge, where students commit to specific actions: avoiding litter, conserving water, respecting wildlife, and sharing what they have learned with others.
To simplify complex ecological concepts, the department introduced a giant, modified version of the traditional game ‘Snakes and Ladders’. In this version, the ladders represented sustainable habits such as saving water, protecting forests, and respecting wildlife, while the snakes symbolised harmful actions like poaching, illegal tree felling, plastic pollution, and habitat destruction. As students moved across the board, they could visually see how positive choices lifted them forward and destructive actions pulled them back. The game transformed abstract conservation ideas into a tangible experience, helping children understand how individual behaviour directly shapes the health of entire ecosystems.
In one of the Anubhuti programmes held at IIT Indore Nagar Van, the Choral Range of the Indore Forest Division, during my interaction with students, their responses reflected a deep and thoughtful understanding of conservation. They shared that “protecting the tiger also means protecting humanity,” recognising the strong link between healthy forests and human survival. Some expressed that “the tiger represents balance in nature, something humans often forget because of greed,” while others felt that “the tiger holds the wild together and keeps the forest alive.” These simple yet powerful reflections showed that conservation had moved beyond textbook knowledge and had become a matter of awareness, responsibility, and ethical understanding for them.
What distinguishes Anubhuti from many environmental education initiatives is not just its design but its institutional embedding and scale.
Since 2016, the programme has been implemented annually across Madhya Pradesh, except during the pandemic years. For the 2025-26 cycle, camps are scheduled between 15 December 2025 and 31 January 2026, covering hundreds of locations statewide. This year alone, Anubhuti will be organised at 469 locations through 938 camps and sessions, with a target outreach of over 118,000 government school students.
Since its inception, Anubhuti has steadily expanded, and by the end of the 2025-26 cycle, the cumulative number of student participants is expected to cross a million, thus making Anubhuti not just an educational intervention but a mass movement in ecological awareness.
To manage this scale, the forest department uses a cascading training model. Master trainers receive state-level instruction and then train divisional-level facilitators known as Prerak—frontline forest personnel including rangers, deputy rangers, and forest guards. These Prerak assist in delivering camps, grounding sessions in local ecological and social contexts while maintaining consistency.
This model reduces reliance on external educators and integrates environmental education into the routine functioning of the forest department—an uncommon approach in India.
A consistent emphasis in Anubhuti materials is the connection between conservation and daily behaviour. Children are taught that environmental protection does not require extraordinary action alone but begins with everyday choices: reducing plastic use, saving water, respecting forest rules, managing waste, and minimising noise.
Ecotourism is introduced as a practical example. Students learn why protected areas have rules, how irresponsible tourism damages habitats, and what responsible visitation looks like. Forest visits are framed as ethical engagements rather than recreational entitlements.
Some forest divisions have also added local conservation components—introducing students to wildlife rescue and rehabilitation efforts, urban rescue responses, or district-level ecotourism models—to make conservation visible and tangible.
Despite its reach and longevity, Anubhuti leaves important questions open. The most significant is long-term impact. While participation numbers and geographic coverage are well documented, there is little systematic data tracking whether early exposure translates into sustained behavioural change, improved coexistence, or deeper conservation engagement over time.
Education research suggests that experiential learning can be powerful, but its effects are strongest when reinforced through continuity—follow-up at school, family discussions, community initiatives, or curriculum integration. Without such reinforcement, experiences risk becoming episodic.
There are also logistical and ethical challenges. Ensuring consistent quality across hundreds of camps, balancing immersive exposure with safety, and navigating landscapes shaped by conflict histories requires careful management.
Acknowledging these limits is essential—not to dismiss Anubhuti, but to contextualise it realistically.
Even with these caveats, Anubhuti raises important policy questions.
First, it challenges the assumption that environmental education must remain confined to classrooms. By institutionalising forest-based learning, it suggests that landscapes themselves can be educators.
Second, it redefines the role of forest departments. Traditionally viewed primarily as enforcement agencies, forest institutions here function as educators and facilitators of ecological understanding.
Finally, it invites reflection on scale. Many experiential education programmes exist in India, but few are sustained at a state-wide level or embedded within administrative systems. Anubhuti demonstrates that such a scale is possible—though not without trade-offs.
As India navigates climate uncertainty, biodiversity loss, and rising human–wildlife encounters, environmental consciousness among younger generations is increasingly seen as foundational rather than supplementary.
Whether Anubhuti participants grow up to become conservation professionals or simply more ecologically mindful citizens is difficult to predict. But the programme rests on a clear belief: care begins with familiarity, and familiarity begins with being present in nature.
Long after facts fade, it may be the memory of silence under a forest canopy, the shape of a pugmark on soil, or the realization that “Main bhi baagh” that stays with a child—quietly shaping how they see the living world around them.
Pradeep Mishra is an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer posted in Madhya Pradesh. He writes on forest governance, community forestry, and environmental policy.
The views expressed are entirely personal and do not represent official departmental positions
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth