India, March 30 -- President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday called on people to accord equal importance to development and environment as she recalled the relationship her parents shared with nature as she was growing up in rural Odisha.

Inaugurating the two-day National Conference on Environment - 2025 at Vigyan Bhawan, she asked people to ponder if it was justified to destroy natural resources that human beings could not create.

Recounting the early years of her life in an Odisha village, she said her family had to rely on dry wood for cooking due to the unavailability of resources. "My father and mother used to collect wood. They would then cut them (into smaller pieces) and make them worth burning. I used to see every day that my father...