Ranchi, May 31: Chief Secretary M.K. Mandal today asked the school principals to ensure students take part in a green drive for World Environment Day on June 5.

Speaking at a meeting of principals and state government officials, Mandal said chief minister Arjun Munda would start the campaign by planting trees at Bariatu Hills.

Schools are expected to bring students in large numbers to watch.

The chief secretary called upon the school principals, who had come from the districts other than Ranchi, to send in a select lot of students in the state capital and organise separate programmes in their respective districts.

He stressed on the need to send the children to villages, where the people needed to be made aware about the environmental issues.

?Let the eco-clubs with the schools take an initiative on this front and take the message of environmental protection to the villages,? he said.

Kalinath Jha, Jharkhand Secondary Teachers? Association official and senior schoolteacher, blamed consumerist attitudes and detachment from cultural roots in the middle class for the condition of the environment.

Jha said that students should be trained along cultural as well as scientific lines before being sent to villages.

?Nobody, who was slightly religious, could think of uprooting trees such as Peepal and the Banyan tree. Such consciousness was very strong in the villages once. But a degeneration has started even in the villages,? he added.

The chief secretary called for ideas from teachers. At this point, principal chief conservator of forests R.K. Zutsi, stepped in.

The conservator suggested a tree planting drive.

Zutsi said a token drive should be carried out on June 5.

As most trees planted in the first week of June will not survive the summer heat, Zutsi suggested a two-step approach.

?Why not plant a few trees to observe world environment day?? he said, adding that a massive plantation could be undertaken after the monsoons.