- Lived:
- b. 31 October 1959, in the Jorhat region of Assam — the life lived almost entirely on and beside Aruna Chapori, a sandbar of the Brahmaputra near Kokilamukh, in the shadow of Majuli island (living, as of September 2026)
- Field:
- forestry — though he has never held a forestry job; a cattle-keeper of the Mising tribe who planted a 550-hectare forest by hand
- The Big Idea:
- One seed a day, every day, for more than forty years, turned a bare sandbar into a real forest with elephants, tigers and rhinos in it — the largest afforestation credited to a single individual anywhere on record.
- In their words:
- "For me, nature itself is God." (at a World Environment Day lecture in Assam, June 2026 — as of September 2026)
- If you remember one thing:
- A government tree-planting scheme on a sandbar ended after five years and everyone went home except one labourer, who kept planting for four more decades — and that is why there is a forest in the middle of the Brahmaputra today.