How to change the world - an example

 

Arun Krishnamurthy [from Time]

There are too many armchair critics like me in the world. We sit and grumble when things don’t work as they should. At the most, we write blogs and draw attention to the problems. We don’t do anything much to solve the problem. Actions speak louder than words but actions aren’t easy. So anyone who actually performs some meaningful action in this absurd world becomes a hero for me. Let me present one such hero today.

Arun Krishnamurthy is a 36-year-old young man from Chennai who was worried about India’s progress and development. Since 2000, when Krishnamurthy was an adolescent boy, India has changed significantly. The population grew by nearly a third. The country’s economy quintupled. Both these booms have put immense pressure on the country’s natural areas, Krishnamurthy realised. For example, more than 70% of surface water in the country is polluted. Poor management of industrial and domestic waste is the chief cause. Another problem that worried Krishnamurthy is the shrinking green spaces especially in cities. His own city of Chennai has just 4.9 sq ft of open space per resident, according to a 2018 study.

Sustainable development deserves a lot more attention, Krishnamurthy realised. And he decided to do something about it. He organised a group of friends and neighbours to clean up a polluted pond in Chennai. The pollution was manmade, of course: plastic and other trash. Krishnamurthy’s great service to the planet had just begun there. His is a remarkable organisation today with 20 full-time staff and 60,000 volunteers per year. Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI) is the name of that organisation which has cleaned up 185 lakes so far.

Krishnamurthy hopes to spread the work of his organisation to all the states of the country by 2025. It is currently operative in 16 states. The founder wants to take his organisation beyond the national borders too. The Time magazine of Oct 24 featured Krishnamurthy and this post is based on that article. Let me conclude with what Krishnamurthy told the Time. “All of us keep waiting for somebody: ‘Will there not be one person who will come and prevent all of this?’ But then I thought, ‘You can’t change the world. But you can change where you are.’”