In 1997, Abdul Hamid Bhat, owner of Rahim Motors, a sales and service center in Srinagar’s Rangreth area set up a small workshop that became a Maruti service center and gradually got upgraded to Maruti Service Zone. In 2005, Rahim Motors started providing service for Mahindra and Mahindra Power generators. Two years later it also became Original Equipment Manufacturers for the company.
But more than machines, Hamid Green, as he is famously known, is enthusiastic about saving the environment. It was Hamid’s passion for the environment that earned him recognition and invitation for participation in International Climate Change Adaptation Conference 2010, at Queensland Australia.
Hamid’s effort to save environment fetched him many awards. He was also selected to be a Bartos Fellow at the UWC-United States of America and also attended the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference in Cambridge, USA over a weekend of March 25 and March 26, 2017.
On 21 February on the eve of national plant day, Bhat himself planted or helped volunteers to plant 1,45,000 trees, mostly pine, in different parts of the Kashmir valley spending Rs 30 lakh from his pocket.
Bhat’s passion began in 2009 when he started taking care of dozens of pine trees planted by the social forestry department on the pavements outside his office in Srinagar’s Barzulla area, left unattended.
As part of promotional activity for his automobile business, he started gifting saplings to clients in place of calendars, diaries, and other stationery items.
On March 15, 2018, Bhat started his new plant associated with Mahindra and Mahindra Limited at Srinagar’s Rangrath area. Mahindra and Mahindra is an Indian multinational car manufacturing corporation.
Bhat also attended the 2018 Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development (GFASD) held on March 21-23, 2018. GFASD is powered by the UN SDG Action Campaign with the support of Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Festival focused on three core themes in 2018: Innovation and disruptive change; Citizen engagement; and Communicating the SDGs.
This second festival was celebrated to seek and recognize the innovators, conveners and breakthrough actors on the world’s intractable development problems, and will showcase the latest innovations, tools, and approaches to SDG implementation.
The 2018 Festival assembled a wide array of organizations and individuals to build synergies among different constituencies, increase mutual understanding, and approach problems and solutions from multiple angles.
The UN SDG Action Campaign is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General administered by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and mandated to support the UN system-wide and the Member States on advocacy and public engagement in the SDG implementation.
– Umar Khurshid
