India
oi-Oneindia English Desk
In the Thar Desert, summer temperatures climb past 50 degrees Celsius, hot enough to warp asphalt and empty out the roads by mid-morning. People or planet – it is not the most comfortable place to be living in. And yet this June, in the middle of that heat, a derelict building outside Bikaner was quietly turned into a wildlife lifeline.
The building used to be an animal mortuary. Today it’s a fully-loaded functional Treatment Room, and next door stands a brand-new Recovery Room – both serving the district’s Wildlife Rescue Centre, run by DCF Sandeep K. Chalani. Neither of those rooms existed three months ago. What made them appear so quickly wasn’t a government tender or a long grant cycle. It was a phone call between two old friends from the army, and a New Delhi family that has spent decades quietly funding causes no one else wanted to touch.
The Amaraah Foundation funded the rapid construction of new wildlife Treatment and Recovery Rooms for Bikaner’s Rescue Centre in Rajasthan’s Thar Desert, with the Indian Army facilitating the project.
A Foundation Built on Habit, Not Headlines
The push began with the Amaraah Foundation, based in New Delhi and led by its Managing Trustee, Mrs. Jyotsana Sharma. She has built her reputation on unglamorous, daily-grind animal welfare, with daily feeding, caring and rendering medical treatment to over 500 strays, even as her Team has enabled sterilization of more than 1000 stray dogs and cats across the National Capital Region. This, besides her support to Gaushalas and bird-rescue NGOs. When she learned that Bikaner’s rescue centre was operating without basic infrastructure, she decided the Foundation “had to” step in.
The Foundation is one arm of a larger family commitment to giving, backed by Mr. Arjun Sharma, Chairman and MD of a diversified business group. Between them, the family also funds the Inder Sharma Foundation (nearly 250 scholarships in travel and tourism education), a free rural dispensary in Punjab running since 2006 that has enabled over 1,600 cataract surgeries, care for more than 1,200 abandoned elderly and destitute individuals through The Earth Saviours Foundation, and support for organisations working in child cancer care, blindness welfare, and rural development in Uttarakhand.
Where the Army Comes In
As the Foundation’s CSR consultant, my job was to turn Mrs. Sharma’s intention into reality – the reality of a functioning building – and for that, I turned to an old connection. Years ago, at the National Defence Academy, I served as Adjutant to a cadet who is now a senior engineer officer at Army HQ. One phone call, one favour called in among the old NDA “band of brothers,” and within 48 hours his Bikaner colleagues had delivered an exhaustive and detailed site assessment.
With that impetus, I set the ball rolling. A local contractor was brought on, the mortuary-turned-Treatment Room was finished by the end of May, and the Recovery Room, again built to the DCF’s exact specifications, followed by early July.
The Foundation also committed to a recurring quarterly medicine supply, which has continued on schedule ever since. It’s a small story, in the grand scheme – one rescue centre, two rooms, one desert town. But it isn’t isolated. Around the same time, the Army’s Konark Corps was desilting long-abandoned water structures elsewhere in the Thar, reviving what locals now describe as pockets of green and water that draw in chinkaras, desert foxes, and migratory birds.
A Pattern, Not a One-Off
Retired soldiers showing up for wildlife and wilderness is, in fact, something of a tradition in India. Working with the same family Trusts, I have already created a 300 native Tree forest in the Aravallis opposite Manesar, starting July 2025.
The Territorial Army’s Ecological Task Force – staffed almost entirely by veterans – has spent decades stabilizing sand dunes along Rajasthan’s Indira Gandhi Canal and replanting the eroded hills around Mussoorie. Further north, in Ladakh’s high-altitude cold desert, veterans have taken on a newer role: patrolling against illegal off-roading and habitat damage to protect species like the snow leopard and the black-necked crane.
There’s a reason for this pattern. Military life instils a particular kind of discipline – logistical thinking, the ability to mobilize quickly, and a willingness to just get the job done without waiting for perfect conditions. Those same instincts, once turned toward conservation rather than combat, tend to produce results beneficial to the community and environment.
What happened in Bikaner this summer is a small example of a larger idea: protecting a country isn’t only about its borders. Sometimes it’s about a desert town’s stray dogs, its rescued wildlife, and the quiet infrastructure that keeps them alive through a 50-degree summer.
About Author:
A 51st NDA course Veteran, he commanded a Recce & Support Unit, including some missile detachments in Kargil 1999. He took premature retirement in March 2001, to follow his chosen path of ‘sewa’.
