Blog

On Monday we spent much of the day shooting b-roll in old Delhi before meeting Anupam Mishra, a Gandhian environmentalist and water rights activist. Although Anupam spoke some English, he preferred to speak to us in Hindi, which Sumaira Aslam (who is traveling with us) translated for us. Anupam spoke about many of the environmental issues now plaguing his country, including the privatization of water and the effects modern water harvesting techniques are having on the environment here. One of the things he said stands out, “If we can learn not to dismiss all the old and more harmonious ways of living and working with our environment perhaps things can start to change. Modern or industrialized doesn’t necessarily mean better.”

We left early Tuesday morning for the city of Agra, which is well known as the home of India’s most famous landmark, the Taj Mahal. The day before we had been able to connect with a very prominent environmental lawyer M.C. Mehta who has fought for years to close factories near India’s historical monuments whose pollution is damaging, and in some cases destroying them. We arranged to interview him the following week at his Eco Ashram on our return from Dharamsala but wanted to get some shots of the factories around the Taj Majal and of the Taj itself to use as b-roll before we met him. M.C. Mehta is also responsible for making all the auto rickshaws go green and run on clean fuel which has had a tremendous effect on pollution levels in Delhi. He should be an interesting interview!



Returning to Delhi late that evening we headed straight to see Medha Patkar whom we had arranged to meet for an interview. Medha was in Delhi for a protest called Action 2007 that focused on the issue of rural villagers and farmers being displaced form their homes due to the construction of the Narmada Dam in the Narmada Valley. Medha is respected and loved by millions of people in India and around the world as a champion for the rights of rural people. Medha was camped out with hundreds of others at Jantar Mantar, the section of Delhi where organized protests are usually held. Speeches, meetings and singing were still going on when we arrived and so we were asked if we could come back in the early morning for the interview. Arriving early the next morning we interviewed Medha and listened as she talked about the problems with the current paradigm. She spoke eloquently about the need to create a new paradigm where the rights of the rural people of India were respected and not destroyed by corporate interests.