In the recently concluded 10-day Ganesh festival, the youngsters of Nagpur led by dynamic young environment activists decided to take to streets to create awareness about the state of climate crisis in Nagpur and highlight the issues of rampant cutting down of trees in Bharatvan to build an unnecessary road.
Three teams of Street play artists belonging to Narayana Vidyalayam, Miraki theatre and Nss unit of Priyadarshani Engineering college supported by nature lovers of the Half Day Widlifers WhatsApp group and residents of Bharatnagar performed street plays at many public places including the Futala waterfront, various malls, Sarvajanik Ganesh mandals, schools and colleges across the city to create awareness about the proposal of the city fathers to build an unnecessary road through Bharatvan when other viable alternatives of other roads exist.
The street playscript was written by the teachers of Narayana Vidyalayam and modified by various teams and included messages of making the citizen aware of the importance of bharatvan, proposal of making an unnecessary road by knocking down more than 500 trees, the adamant stance of the city administrators in giving silly reasons for the need of cutting down these trees ; and requested visarjan bound devotees to follow eco-friendly idol immersion practices.
The street plays also highlighted the parallel citizen movement happening at Mumbai to save Aarey forest & warned the administrators of Nagpur that a chipko movement will start if they start the process of cutting down trees.
Earlier, the residents of Bharatnagar who are fighting to save the beautiful urban jungle in their backyard created a replica of a Himalayan PIKA and took the rat which is going to be affected by climate change in Himalayas to all govt offices involved in building the road through Bharatvan and read out a warning message from Bharatvan Cha Raja which spelt the doom for the future of the Nagpur City.
Team #savebharatvan wants to thank the teachers of Narayana Vidyalayam, trainee actors of Miraki theatre, NSS unit of Priyadarshani Engineering college and specially wants to thank Architect Prathamesh Waliokar, Vignesh Iyer, Rupesh Pawar, RJ Preeti, Deepali Mahajan , Dr Jaydeep Das, Sashi Kanoriya, Laxmi Kinkhede, Sachin Kale, Shivam Wagh, Dr N.S. Ambatkar, Dr M.P. Singh and several other volunteers and organisers of Ganesh Mandals across Nagpur for the help during the street plays.
