There is no hiding to the fact that dumping the waste in an open area has become a daily routine for many people across the nation. When they buy stuff from shop, they take their needs and throw away the unwanted materials or things outside their house. This is unacceptable by any means as it is against the environment.
Chennai-based environmentalist Arun Krishnamurthy has been observing all these activities and he himself got hurt after seeing the surroundings with full of waste. He always wanted a cleaner environment and had advised his neighbours to dump the waste in the dust bin. Even after his words of wisdom, people were least bothered and proceeded to their natural work of throwing away waste in the wrong place. At times, those waste even ended up in lakes, damaging the quality of water and aquatic life at the worst scene.
Arun Krishnamurthy couldn’t tolerate watching garbage being dumped in a nearby pond. Leaving behind a life of luxury by quitting his well-paying job at Google, he launched an eco-movement that made an instant impact in society. The eco-movement cleaned and restored as many as 93 freshwater bodies across 14 states in the country.
The community-led movement turned into the Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI), which is non-profit wildlife conservation and habitat restoration group. Since its inception in the year 2007, it has taken off the garbage and harmful botanical species from these lakes and ponds, which are important for maintaining the ecological balance of nature.
It should be noted that Krishnamurthy’s love for water bodies started at a younger age, as he grew up in a neighbourhood surrounded by them. The nature lover just wanted to see clean lakes with frogs, fish, birds and greenery.
The 32-year-old activist also adds that leaving a lucrative job at Google was not tough for him as he has never been uncertain about anything that he has done in life. For a cleaner and greener environment, the young environment enthusiast took giant strides to restore water bodies in Chennai, backed by the local panchayat, and later expanded his constant efforts to other cities as well.
“We work very closely with the Centre and State governments. We do not receive any funding but depend on the government for permissions and approvals. There is a positive trend across the country where the administration is keen on encouraging groups such as ours to mobilise the community to revive freshwater lakes and ponds,” Krishnamurthy told IANS in an email interview.
To human being’s potential to ruin the environment, he had earlier asked: “Have we lost the ‘human’ in the ‘being’?”
“Convincing the local community in understanding the need for conserving the freshwater body is an interesting piece of this bigger puzzle. Once we have the local community involved, we then do not have to worry about the water body. All problems related to pollution, encroachments etc can be thus sorted out,” he said.
Krishnamurthy said: “India’s environment is fascinating, we need to learn to understand our nation’s natural history and start working towards real-time conservation of the same.”