River Vaigai is an eyesore today. Scant rainfall, garbage and relentless pollution over the years has turned the river into a dumping yard. Why is the river so brutally abused?
“Only the community that uses and needs the river can honour and protect it,” says Felicia Young, the Founder and Executive Director of “Earth Celebrations”, a non-profit organisation in New York. “People have to come together to ensure that the negative actions that pollute and exploit the river for the gain of a few are kept in check,” she asserts.
But the Vaigai has the potential of becoming a grand waterway again, says Felicia. The native third generation New Yorker who is also a community cultural development artist and theatrical pageant director is working on Vaigai River Restoration Pageant (VRRP) with local stakeholders and aims to stop further ruin of the river.
In the last 20 years, Felicia has, through advocacy projects and theatrical pageants, effected preservation of the community gardens in New York city, addressed climate change and restored the species and habitats of the once polluted Hudson river.
Madurai’s Chithirai festival is the source of inspiration for Felicia, she says. During a visit to the Temple town in 1989, she witnessed the famous celestial wedding of Goddess Meenakshi. So inspired was she by the festival pageant that she decided to use music, painting, sculpture, puppetry, dance, poetry, performance and ceremony that she saw being used in Madurai, as a means of getting communities back home to work together. She worked with the arts in New York from 1991 to 2005. “I engaged people from diverse communities to work together creatively for a common goal,” she says.
According to Felicia, it worked as a catalyst to mobilise the community at grassroots level, won support of elected officials, media and philanthropists and resulted in saving hundreds of community gardens in the city.
The positive change motivated her to create her next project, the Hudson River Pageant from 2009 to 2012 to highlight the restoration of the species and habitats of the Hudson River Estuary in New York City. This time round she engaged the community for educational and recreational activities such as oyster planting to organically cleanse the river, rowing and kayaking as new recreational uses of the river, wetlands planting to mitigate flood damage, river clean-ups to clear away garbage, recycling ceremonies, promoting waste solutions and fish release programmes.
Felicia is confident that the educative and innovative VRRP will get people to initiate positive change.
There was a time when the Vaigai River was a lifeline for the region. Along its banks, people hunted, fished and lived, settlements were established which later powered the area's industrial growth. But, construction of the dam affected its flow and the release of industrial and bio-medical waste and domestic sewage into the river and decreasing rainfall has led to the river’s woeful state.
Felicia’s was shocked to see further deterioration in Vaigai when she visited Madurai recently. “The Vaigai seems more barren than ever and the crisis is more severe than ever,” she says. “Unless every citizen curbs production of waste, pollution and environmental destruction, ecological balance cannot be restored.”
Felicia is of the opinion that art does not only have to reflect life but can effect it too by inspiring peoples’ imagination and bringing them together to address crucial issues. “Every city has public spaces that define it. But these monuments to urban life don’t build themselves. Communities come together to create them,” she says, and adds, “I am inspired to make this project happen and it is only a start in turning the river into a truly vibrant public space.”
Helping her out are environmental organizations, academic institutions, washermen and farming groups, activists, government and district administration representatives and corporation councillors, corporate bodies and industrialists, cultural institutions, artists, performers and the common man of Madurai. They are scheduled to hold their first meeting in early August.
A reimagining of Vaigai river’s place in modern Madurai may perhaps gain unprecedented traction in the coming days. And as Felicia says, “Gandhi utilized ‘non-violent resistance’ as social action to create change. VRRP provides a creative approach, engaging people through the arts and ‘joyous affirmation’ as social action to create positive change”.
The collaborators:
J. Rajasekaran , Field Director of CM Centre Madurai for Educational Services in South India, is the Co-Founder for the Project. He has been researching on and documenting the Vaigai River for the past 20 years. “Expect fireworks in the meetings,” he says, “but we can not allow anybody to disuse the river anymore.”
The idea is to first identify the reasons why people pollute the river, collectively look for solutions for river restoration and create the impetus to implement various issues related to water quality, scarcity, storage, sanitation and pollution.”
The DHAN Foundation , a non-profit NGO in Madurai is a Co-Sponsor/Partner. With a commitment of at least five years, it has scheduled the public launch of the project on October 2, 2014, and will be anchoring the facilitation process.
Says Executive Director, M.P.Vasimalai : “Having worked on water bodies and done the basic mapping, we have joined in the consciousness drive. But Vaigai’s issue is long-term and the cultural pageantry may not be adequate. Ongoing engagement of communities is very important and we have been working with 10,000 families.”
Dr. David Blake Willis , Professor of Anthropology and Education at Fielding Graduate University, California, is a co-partner along with Dr. Geeta Mehta , Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at Columbia University and Founder-President of Asia Initiatives, a non-profit organization working on global community incentive programs throughout Asia.
