The public perception that Kerala’s environment is degrading is wrong, disaster management expert Muralee Thummarukudy said here on Sunday. The State’s environment at present is seeing its best days in the past 100 years, he said.
He was speaking at the second edition of the Peruvanam International Village Festival (PIVF) at Sreelakam Convention Centre at Peruvanam, near here.
“People like to hear and say that the environment is getting worse. If you look at the last hundred years, this is the most progressive period for Kerala’s environment, according to all parameters,” he said, citing the drastic drop in deforestation and the expansion of the green canopy. He said the State had become greener as the use of firewood decreased.
However, he said, people had lost their organic relationship with nature and it needed to be restored. “The organic relationship with nature has changed within one generation. It created a notion that even if nature is destroyed, it does not affect us personally,” he said.
He said that art and literature played a major role in creating environmental awareness in Kerala but today such involvement was not enough.
‘Lost hope’
Mr. Thummarukudy said Kerala should accept the reality that the new generation had lost hope in the State.
“Youth are not taking forward the cultural life of Kerala. All those who are able to go abroad are leaving the State. Within five years, one fourth of Kerala’s children will go abroad. We need to think about who will be left when the best and brightest are gone and what kind of policies will be formulated by the leaders emerging from them,” Mr. Thummarukudy said.
‘Indian cinemas’
Kannada filmmaker Girish Kasaravalli said that it was not right to brand films made in different languages as one cultural entity as the culture and politics vary in regions. He said the whole notion of Indian cinema was wrong and that it had to be called “Indian cinemas”.
He was interacting with writer and film critic C. S. Venkiteswaran at the PIVF.
He cited how the early Kannada films discussed the theme of caste oppression under the influence of socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia while the subject was almost absent in Malayalam cinema. “When you talk about Indian cinema you talk about it as one cultural entity. It is not,” Mr. Kasaravalli asserted.
In response to a question on the ‘new wave’ film movement, he drew a distinction between the nature of new wave films made in different parts of the world. “Indian new wave is different from the French new wave. The Indian new wave has nothing to do with existentialism or with Godard. But I think the Indian new wave hasn’t lost completely. In some pockets still people are making interesting films. Unfortunately those films are not coming to the mainstream. We don’t get to watch or read about them. Even regional media are not writing about them,” he said.
Curtains down
The second edition of PIVF, which witnessed thought-provoking sessions on three days, came to a close on Sunday. Dancers Mallika Sarabhai and Methil Renuka, Dalit writer Laxman Gaikwad, cine director Sathyan Anthikad, advocate S. Jayasankar, artist Riyas Komu, and writer G.R. Indugopan, among others, attended various sessions that were followed by leather shadow puppetry by Sindhe Chithambara Rao & group, Dharamavaram, Andhra Pradesh.
