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Indian youth once hailed as conservation hero now spends days spraying disinfectant to manage Covid-19
- Bilal Ahmad Dar, featured in a documentary on the preservation of Kashmir’s Wular Lake, was passionately involved in the trash-filled water body’s clean-up
- The government later hired him to raise environmental awareness but the job involved relocation and got reassigned – leaving his efforts and the lake – in tatters
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Bilal Ahmad Dar was just 14 when he was featured in a 2014 documentary by a local filmmaker titled Saving the Saviour on the conservation of Wular Lake at the foothills of the Himalayas in India’s restive region of Kashmir.
The short film, released in 2017, went on to win international accolades and was broadcast on the National Geographic channel. Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned Bilal in his weekly radio address to the nation and implored India’s youth to follow in his footsteps and protect the environment.
The Wular, considered to be one of Asia’s largest freshwater lakes, used to be a source of fish for communities living nearby. But a decision in the 1950s by the regional government to plant millions of water-sucking willows, to create plantations for growing firewood and timber, ended up almost destroying the water body. In recent years, it became fetid with garbage and plastic.
Bilal recalls hearing stories of the lake’s importance to villagers from his late father: “He would tell me the lake gave them everything needed to live – food and water. And we need to take care of it.”
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