Episode Details

His memoir, Ghosts on Peepal Trees: My Journey From Folktales to Forests, is out now on Amazon: https://amzn.in/d/0efGvEyp

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Peepal Baba, born Azad Jain and known formally as Swami Prem Parivartan, is the founder of Give Me Trees Trust and one of the most prolific tree planters India has ever produced. He planted his first tree on his eleventh birthday in 1977 and has not stopped since. Across fifty years, he and his volunteers have planted and preserved over 25 million trees and restored close to 2.7 lakh hectares of land across 21 states, with more than a crore of them peepal trees planted by his own hand. He is an Osho sannyasi who treats planting as a spiritual practice, and he is completely uninterested in slogans, panels, or the doom-industry around the environment. What he offers instead is five decades of grassroots work and some blunt, uncomfortable opinions about land, cities, and what Indians get wrong about both.

In this episode, Vinamre and Peepal Baba discuss:

• Why wealthy Indians are quietly buying farmland — farmhouse culture, post-COVID reverse migration, and why he says your 16th-floor flat was never real estate
• How a beginner actually starts — 40 balcony pots before buying land, gardener before farmer, and his three-step method for students
• The truth about organic farming — why he calls certification a racket, what "natural farming" really means, and his national challenge to grow a bigger bottle gourd chemical-free
• Delhi's pollution, reframed — not an AQI problem but an "88% encroachment" problem, and how Swachh Bharat could fix it
• What he'd do as Delhi's town planner — no politicians on the board, lessons from Singapore and Chandigarh, and why ugly cities breed depression
• His 49-year love for the peepal tree — the "ghost tree" superstition, why it's a keystone species, and why he changed his name from Azad Jain

His memoir, Ghosts on Peepal Trees: My Journey From Folktales to Forests (Ebury Press / Penguin), is out now on Amazon and Flipkart.

Follow Peepal Baba on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peepalbaba

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peepalbaba

Give Me Trees Trust: https://givemetrees.org

Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Coming Up

00:00:50 – Why Everyone Wants Farmland

00:07:25 – Who's Buying Farmland Now

00:14:46 – City vs Farm Living

00:22:01 – A Day On The Farm

00:29:01 – Why Land Means Jobs

00:36:18 – How To Start Farming

00:52:36 – Natural vs Chemical Farming

01:04:16 – Delhi's Real Pollution Problem

01:17:29 – Fixing Cities Like Singapore

01:23:19 – Farm Life & Time

01:24:37 – Barefoot Walking & Rituals

01:26:00 – The Sacred Peepal Tree

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Vinamre Kasanaa is a writer at heart, podcaster and entrepreneur by craft.

He spends a significant part of his time reading and researching.

With over 500 podcasts under his belt, he’s interviewed everyone—from HNIs and industry leaders to everyday superheroes.

Follow Vinamre:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinamre-kasanaa-b8524496/

Instagram: https://ww