- Novanita Sharma
Here we are, at another crossroad of a year. Its been a month already, and I am striking out the first month of 2026 with these few words for our dear readers of ‘The Seed’, the nature lovers, the conservationists, and activists at heart, the compassionate ones who inspired us with your presence, the ones who have become a part of the evolving, expanding, and emerging genre of prakriti sahitya, I offer my heartfelt gratitude to all of you, for coming along this journey with our team for all these years. Your presence has motivated us, your forbearance for our humble efforts inspires us to find new vistas, seek new horizons to enrich this exchange of thoughts into purposeful pursuits of creativity, and commitment.
As we begin the year with an unmistakable festive mood in Assam, lets attempt to delve deeper into this festive fervour. Assamese society revels its festivities; in our land of natural bounty, we like to begin and end everything, every aspect of our life, be it communal or personal with a festive vibe. We are bound to colourful showdown of our traditions and rituals with festivals, and this spate of colour, and bonhomie marks the rich tapestry of the diverse cultural heritage of our region. In fact, this festive aura is the signature of Assam and Northeastern India, in our vastly diverse country.
For the nature lovers, and conservationists it is most delightful to observe the integration of the collective consciousness for nature-conservation with this festive spirit of Assam, because of which we see emerging enthusiasm among the young generations and people’s leaders from our society in organising special festivals themed on forest conservation, river conservation, and other relevant aspects of nature conservation. The ‘Dulung Subansiri Prakriti Mahotsav 2025’ held in December 2025, and the upcoming ‘Poba Barxaranya Prakriti Utsav’ to be organised from 1st February 2026 are very good examples of people driven nature conservation-based community festivals of Assam. These new age festivals have evolved to absorb the collective social responsibility of everyone in the human society towards nature conservation. These festivals have set a wave of change in Assam by connecting the common people and the young generations with the thoughts, and essence of nature conservation by inculcating various programs, events, interactions, and activities related to forest conservation, mental empowerment, intellectual growth, prakriti sahitya, environment protection, nature-conservation based tourism, etc along with the cultural festivities. These nature conservation themed festivals share the unambiguous message of the socio-intellectual change that swept Assam over the four decades long grassroots driven biodiversity conservation movement in Assam since 1980s.
Nature’s Beckon has beautifully assimilated the festive essence of Assamese society to set the stage of the once globally trending mega conservation events like the first Rainforest Festival of Assam in 2001, and it continues to connect the people of Assam with the ethos of the Wild Birds Conservation Movement, with the ‘Pobitara Wild Birds Conservation Festival’ every year. This blending of nature conservation movement with the socio-cultural framework of Assam, and the ensuing rise of collective consciousness regarding nature conservation sets an encouraging future for the Assamese society. While, at the same time, we must not forget that the festivals, and optimism must lead us to greater levels of commitment, and perseverance to propel the biodiversity conservation movement of Assam with befitting actions in the future.