For more than a year now, volunteers, students and staff members of kanthari International Institute for Social Change at Vellayani, volunteers of Neerthadakam, many of whom are residents of places on the banks of the Lake, and several NGOs, have been part of efforts to save the largest fresh water lake in Thiruvananthapuram district. Each volunteer was motivated to get their hands dirty by the plight of the Lake that has been shrinking every year.
Thanks to their work, many more volunteers from colleges in and around the city have pitched in to get rid of invasive flora that is threatening to suffocate the Lake.
On Sunday (February 24), 50 students from University College will be in Vellayani to help clean yet another area of the water body. “This time we are concentrating on places around Ookode, near danseuse Daksha Seth’s house and so her daughter, actor-dancer Isha Sharvani, will also participate in pulling out the plants and removing those from the water,” says Prakash Gopinath, founder of Indus Cycling Embassy, whose members have been a part of the drive to remove the plants responsible for depleting the oxygen in the waters of the Lake.
Concerted effort
He says that unless there is a streamlined effort to save the Lake and the ecosystem that thrives around it, the district will lose a precious green lung that has also been a source of fresh water for people in its vicinity.
Volunteers taking part in a cleaning drive
Kiran, founder of Neerthadakam, which was started in 2014, says members of the group are distressed about the decline in the Lake’s area and depth. “Many of us were born and brought up there. We have swum and played in the water and on the banks of the Lake. I have seen how people are treating this precious water body as a dump yard,” explains the 27-year-old.
To begin with, he, along with four of his friends, started removing the waste — plastics, beer bottles and organic waste from the water, including decayed plants. Initially, their parents were not pleased with their work. “But when they saw the amount of waste we have removed from the Lake, they gradually came around to supporting us,” says Kiran.
Instead of merely paying lip service and talking about the need to protect wetlands, Kiran and his friends decided to act first and let their deeds do the talking. He says that when the residents saw what was beneath the serene waters of the lake, they were also upset and many have joined in to protect the water body. Ward members and residents are helping them in many ways, adds Kiran.
Students’ participation
Expressing his gratitude to kanthari, he says they were instrumental in broad-basing the clean-up activities. As a result of their tireless work, students from 15 colleges began to reach there on weekends to revive the Lake.
However, he points out that a grassy invasive plant with sharp, thorny edges have covered many hectares of the Lake. “We do the cleaning manually but when we tried to uproot this particular plant, all of us ended up with lacerations. We desperately need some kind of machines to uproot this species,” he says.
With the government and other official bodies still to wake up to the disaster, Neerthadakam and organisations around Vellayani have launched a united effort to begin a fundraiser to buy “ at least one machine to remove these plants”.
As Kiran points out, people in two panchayats, Kalliyoor and Vengannoor, depend on the Lake for fresh water. Moreover, it attracts more than 150 winged visitors and is home to several varieties of native fish.
“Why isn’t any government taking steps to save this lake right in the capital? Is it so difficult for them? It would be so much easier for them to clean the Lake and revive it,” he says.
He hopes that eventually the clean-up act gets the support of district and panchayat officials. But Kiran and his friends are not waiting till they step in.
