Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Forty-year-old Gaurav Tyagi, on a Kashmir-to-Kanyakumari Anna Shuddhi Yatra on foot, reached Bhopal on Sunday, urging farmers to grow organic crops and children to abandon junk food.
Tyagi, a college dropout and organic farmer from Haidarpur village of Uttar Pradesh, has battled severe health issues, including an autoimmune disorder, diabetes, a removed spleen, Hepatitis B, and long-term steroid use.
He spent almost a decade in and out of hospitals, including two years on a liquid diet. Despite these challenges, Tyagi is walking approximately 3,600 km over 150 days. “I believe most of my health problems are due to wrong eating habits, and I don’t want others to suffer as I did,” he said during a stopover at Gandhi Bhawan in Bhopal.
He began the Yatra from Lal Chowk in Srinagar on June 26 and has passed through Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, covering 1,754 km so far.
From Bhopal, he plans to enter Maharashtra via Betul. He has interacted with roughly 40,000 farmers and an equal number of children. Tyagi visits schools each morning during assemblies and engages with farmers throughout the day. He highlights India’s growing health crisis, pointing to rising obesity, diabetes, cardiac issues, and cancer, even among children of farmers.
Father of two and a resident of Noida, Tyagi runs his own model organic farm. He is accompanied by a childhood friend Rajat Bharti in a jeep carrying essentials. “I request farmers to provide home-cooked meals, and they rarely refuse,” he said.
