Thunberg-inspired Rallies for Climate Action Planned Across India
Thunberg-inspired Rallies for Climate Action Planned Across India. Students and activists at the second ‘Fridays For Future’ global strike in Juhu beach on May 24, 2019(Uma Kadam, Mumbai TOI, BCCL)
Some time last year, Greta Thunberg – a teenage Swedish girl – walked out of her school in protest against world leaders, corporates and ‘adults’ for not acting upon humanity’s greatest threat – climate change. Little did she know that her action would inspire millions of children and adults alike all over the world.
Inspired by Thunberg’s rebellion, Indians across the country have planned to take their protest to the streets starting this week. At least 12,500 people have planned a ‘climate strike’ and will be participating across 20 events across India between September 20 and 27. From big cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi to smaller towns like Gudur (Andhra Pradesh), Bulandshahar (Uttar Pradesh) to cities like Allahabad, Patna and Kochi – thousands of people will be part of the global climate strike.
They will be part of a global movement which is seeing at least 3,500 events being planned during the same week. Another 1,000 companies, including a few big ones like Tumblr, Kickstarter, WordPress, Imgur and BitTorrent, have decided to support the Global Climate Strike.
While climate scientists, environmental organisations and activists have been trying to raise awareness on the magnitude of the crisis ahead of us, activists say that world leaders and corporates have largely been slow to react.
“Greta has set off a climate movement like no one else has managed to in the past. Joining her are students from across the world and several parts of India asking the leadership to wake up to this and act,” said Shivani Shah, campaign manager at Jhatkaa.org.
The digital platform is co-organising several of these climate strikes. “The intention is to bring the discussion to the fore and letting the leadership know that India is really vulnerable to rising seas, floods, droughts, desertification, disease and even war (over resources) and we don’t have the luxury to ‘grow’ without simultaneously building into our plans sustainability,” she added.
While 20 events for which close to 12,500 people have registered on the Jhatkaa platform, there could be many more that are not. Several organisers say that this is a movement and several events are spontaneously coming up across the country. In Mumbai, for instance, a group of enthused have youngsters have come together to form a local chapter of the Friday For Futures (FFF) movement.
This Friday, volunteers from FFF-Mumbai will go to ten schools and talk to at least 800 children on the urgency of the climate crisis. “We will either show a video message that Greta has put together for students or talk about her actions.
We will also highlight the current environment risks in Mumbai – from mangroves under threat to the annual flooding of the city to the worsening air quality,” said a volunteer with FFF Mumbai, Ruhie Kumar.
