Actor Dia Mirza, who recently debuted on the small screen with a show titled Ganga – The Soul of India, has used every opportunity to generate awareness on the need to conserve earth. However, when she recently took a stand on the water crisis in Latur on Twitter, she was trolled. “The irony of the times we live in: farmers commit suicide due to drought and people waste water to ‘play’ #Holi. Go ahead call me anti-Hindu,” she tweeted. The actor later retracted her comment saying it was not meant to hurt any religious sentiment. “The problems that we are facing today are much larger than you and I. It [attacks and trolls] is going to increase; people who use this kind of nonsense to dilute and misguide attention from such grave issues need to be ignored,” she said while speaking to The Hindu recently.
The actor, who is also working with animal rights organisation PETA, said: “We need to see what our administrative bodies are doing to reduce affects of such calamities. Sending water tankers is a quick fix but we need to look at long term solutions. For instance increasing tiger numbers cannot be good news if we don’t concentrate to increasing forest cover. Without enough forest corridors man-animal conflict will rise.” When asked if it could be a coincidence that she debuts on TV with a project that speaks about the condition of rivers, she laughs. “When they came to me with the project, I asked them if they have written it keeping me in mind.”
The deteriorating conditions of Indian rivers have been a concern for many years now. Both Centre and State governments have invested crores of rupees in various initiatives to clean rivers but the projects are yet to deliver. “We are putting effluent in rivers and then saying we will clean it. The government, tourism and people have to come together and use the mediums of film, radio and print to spread awareness,” said Dia Mirza.
“It is impossible to teach people to conserve nature if they don’t learn to love nature. One doesn’t have to be an activist and start a movement. The idea is to bring nature in mainstream communication; combining the narrative of nature with a human tale and,” she added. The actor-turned-producer who is thrilled about starring in an Iranian film “Salaam Bombay” said that the production house aims at generating contents for feature film, internet and television.- MD
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