Femina celebrates women who’ve made a difference to our planet

‘For a mouthful of water, I trudge a mile,’ sing groups of rural women as they walk a laborious walk to fetch half a bucket of drinking water.

Globally, women are witnessing the effects of fast depleting natural resources and rising pollution on their children, livestock and livelihood.

Explains Canadian Forest Conservator, Chanda Meek, “I think conservation is a natural extension of women’s roles as caretakers and as people who are often affected by decisions by agencies and governments who want to turn traditional resources into commodities.”

In India, women have been in the forefront of environmental agitation against dams, mines and ecologically unsound development programmes. Medha Patkar, Maneka Gandhi, Afsana Amarsy today inspire and lead a generation of women who’ve taken the responsibility to protect and nurture the environment.

Be it animal rights, concern for rivers, preserving traditional agricultural methods or afforestation, these women work tirelessly, driven only by their own passion for a planet that’s being wasted. Here are a few who get all thumbs up for what they are doing for us.

Medha Patkar
The name Medha Patkar is synonymous with Narmada. She’s the woman behind the 20-year-old ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ — a protest against the construction of a dam on the river. Even though her rallies and marches are peaceful, she has many a time been a victim of police beatings and arrests. But she has been successful in putting a stay on further construction of the half built Sardar Sarovar Dam.

The National Alliance of People’s Movements, a network of activists across the country, is a byproduct of her environmental work for Narmada.

“The people in the Narmada Valley are fighting a virtual battle — the battle for the right to life,” says Patkar.

Afsana Amarsy
Multi-cultural by upbringing and education, Afsana Amarsy is an Indian who was born in Madagascar, educated in London and Paris and who finally found her roots back in India. Amarsy, who lives in Montreal, Canada, is a filmmaker with a difference. She makes IMAX films and has just completed her seventh feature, called ‘India — Kingdom of the Tiger,’ which is the story of Jim Corbett.

This is the first indigenously made IMAX film in India, she says. The film had its world premier last June at the British Film Institute in London and has been screened at Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Canada; Cape Town, South Africa; Taipei, Taiwan, and New York and Miami, USA. It is scheduled to be screened in 56 other countries this year.

Kamal Shinde
Kamal Shinde comes from a small village in Maharashtra. When her husband abandoned her, she decided to become a farm labourer to make a living. Today, Kamal runs a very successful catering business which provides employment as well as housing facilities to many other women in her village. She hasn’t stopped just there, though.

Kamal Shinde, with the help of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and India’s National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development, introduced a credit scheme to the people of her district. She mobilised them into improving sanitation, planting trees and building roads. Kamal has inspired many others to rally people at the grassroots level into caring and actively working for the environment.

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