V Piyush Sethia, better known as Piyush Manush, is an Indian environmental activist.

Activism

Along with few others in 2010, he formed the Salem Citizen's Forum, a collective of urban citizens that engaged in people welfare activities and improving public delivery systems. The Forum adopted the

Mookaneri Lake Mookaneri Lake, also called Kannankurichi Lake, is a lake in Kannankurichi, in the Salem Taluk of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, that covers an area of . It is located to the south of the Shevaroy Hills and is a major body of water in Salem. T ...

, a 58-acre located at the foot of the

Shevaroy Hills The Selvarayan hills, with the anglicised name Shevaroy Hills, are a towering mountain range (1620 m) near the city of Salem, in Tamil Nadu state, southern India. It is one of the major hill stations in Tamil Nadu and in the Eastern Ghats. The loc ...

, was conserved from massive pollution. He initiated and has been instrumental in reviving water bodies such as Ammapettai Lake, Kundukkal Lake, Ismailkhan Lake, Arisipalayam Pond and Pallappatti well etc. across districts of Salem and

Dharmapuri Dharmapuri is a special grade town in the north western part of Tamil Nadu, India. It serves as the administrative headquarters of Dharmapuri district which is the first district created in Tamil Nadu after the independence of India by splitti ...

. He also opposed commercial mining in

Kanjamalai Kanjamalai is a hill located 14 km west of Salem District of Tamil Nadu, India. The estimated terrain elevation above sea level is about 1643 Iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extrac ...

hills and stood against encroachments and

land mafia ''Mafia Raj'' is a term for a criminalized nexus (or "mafia") of government officials, elected politicians, business interests and other entities (such as law-enforcement authorities, non-governmental organisations, trade unions or criminal org ...

. He, along with others, received the

CNN-IBN Indian of the Year CNN-News18 (originally CNN-IBN) is an Indian English-language news television channel founded by Raghav Bahl based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is currently co-owned by Network18 Group and Warner Bros. Discovery. CNN provides internatio ...

award on behalf people of Chennai in 2015.

Coop forest

He created the "Coop Forest" in 2009, an initiative for forest preservation, on 1.5 acres of hilly land in

which quickly expanded to 150 acres. Over the years, the Coop Forest has turned into a home for

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, bu ...

(Piyush has planted 40,000 bamboo saplings) and guava, lemon, vilvam, neem, rosewood, pungam, custard apple, jack fruit, silk cotton, Singapore cherry, chiku, mango, and other varieties of plants and trees. The Coop Forest experiments with finding alternatives to plastic, steel and cement.

Arrest

On 8 July 2016, Manush was charged with non-bailable sections along with two other activists for protesting against the construction of the Muluvadi Gate over-bridge in Salem by Southern Railway. The arrest caused an uproar on social networks, with some of his co-workers calling for his release. While jailed, Manush was kept in solitary confinement and allegedly tortured, according to his friends and family. He was released on conditional bail on 21 July. On 18 June 2018, Manush was arrested while protesting the proposed 270-kilometre super highway connecting Salem and Chennai. He was arrested with Actor Mansoor Ali Khan for a speech made by him, 40 days ago in a Village in Salem district. After his arrest, an uproar has broken out in Tamil Nadu, many of the environmentalists and activist has condemned the act and the chief opposition party DMK's working president MK Stalin also issued a statement saying that the DMK will conduct a statewide protest if the police do not stop harassing the people.

Attack by BJP

On 25 August 2019, Piyush Manush visited the Salem BJP office to "ask their thoughts on the economy and the

Revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir On 5 August 2019, the Parliament of India voted in favour of a resolution tabled by Home Minister Amit Shah to revoke the temporary special status, or autonomy, granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir—a regio ...

," as well as to confront them about threats he reportedly got from BJP members. Piyush was

live streaming Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...

as he went to the office and got into an argument with the BJP workers; the stream ended with BJP workers garlanding him with chappals and attacking him, causing him to drop his phone. Other recordings that aired on television afterwards showed BJP members attacking Piyush Manush in the sight of multiple police officers who tried to stop the attack. Politicians and activists showed their support for Piyush Manush and criticized the BJP for the violent attack as the videos circulated on social media.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Manush, Piyush Living people Indian environmentalists Year of birth missing (living people)