‘Younger generation has to protect environment’

Thoughts and ideas are made at a young age. That is why we reach out to school and college students. It is their future and at the end of teenage and early 20s, they are in the formative years to make choices. It is their space and they have to protect the environment, as there is only one earth.

We publish books in Tamil and magazines for the students. The group’s members also go to schools and colleges in TN and at times, to other states also, to talk about the importance of protecting the environment. We also emphasise a lot on traditional foods, as the consumption pattern should be more earth friendly. We believe that frugality is not stinginess -- it is a simple modest life. There is a mall in Chennai that consumes about 12,000 units of electricity every hour. About 25 km away, there is a village that consumes 1,000 units per day. This mall consumes 12 days of the village’s needs in just one hour. The government gives 24 hours supply for this mall while the village gets lesser hours of power. We questioned the move.

We work as an advocacy group, talking to political parties and sensitise them. We go to courts to bring out illegalities in projects, apart from campaigns. Our strength is that we talk scientifically for masses to understand.