Vinod Bodhankar is the co-founder-director of Sagarmitra Abhiyaan - an Initiative, dedicated to plastic waste management at the school, housing society, village, and city levels. He also serves as the convenor of the Indian Peninsula River Basins Council, Jalbiradari, a network of river teams from 11 states and 3 union territories. Additionally, he is a founder and director of Vishwasankruti Ashram for ethical training and leadership. Mr. Vinod has been honored with the 'Jal Rishi Samman' in 2017 at the National Convention on Droughts and Floods. Since 2022, he has been appointed as the 'Advisor for Ocean and Coastal Energy Conservation' by the Swedish-based organization 'People's World Commission on Drought and Flood.'

In memory of Sujit Patwardhan, the 2023 lecture Vinod Bodhankar on 1st October, took us on a 12-year journey tracing the path of Sagar Mitra Abhiyaan and its dedicated team of 250,00 volunteers in plastic waste recycling. He unveiled the significance of collaborative efforts, strategies for community engagement that bring about meaningful change from a personal to a global perspective.

On September 22nd, Parisar organised on-ground activities to build a buzz around the concept of car-free cities. The event witnessed a lot of one-on-one engagement with people passing by on the street.

The session started with an engaging street play by the Mangal Theatre artists who touched upon the idea of cycling in the city, some of the benefits of cycling, and a representation of what would happen if a person of authority advocates for improving cycle infrastructure in the city. They even added a rhythmic twist with some catchy rap music on ‘cycle and cycling’!

Want to relive the performance? Catch the recorded version of the play on our YouTube channel.

Impact of Proposed Road Widening

As traffic levels soar in the city, roads get congested, leading to demands from various quarters - the traffic police, elected representatives, PMC planners and engineers and even the public - for road widening. Road widening is routinely marked in the Development Plan, in anticipation of growth in traffic. Eventually budgets are allocated and once land acquisition procedures (both time-consuming and very expensive) are completed, the widening of the road commences. There are two fundamental issues with this approach though - without any restraint on vehicle growth, soon the widened road also gets congested. And in the process of road widening, trees - often old and big trees along the roadside - get cut in the hundreds. In fact the road department is responsible for most tree cutting in the city. More traffic and less trees is a double recipe for increasing pollution, GHG emissions and heat island effects.

Transport experts have long dismissed road widening as a way to solve congestion. Instead they recommend promoting walking, cycling and public transport and vehicle restraint measures.

On account of the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, Parisar and Prayas organised an interactive session for 40 ASHA workers from the Kothrud and Shivajinagar area. The session was organised at Indradhanushya Centre for Citizenship on 4th September at 10:30 am.

The session was designed keeping in mind the profile of these health workers and emphasis was making it more interactive and building on the knowledge and experience that they have as health care workers. In fact, this group was chosen keeping in mind the potential they have in disseminating health related information to households. The intention is to engage with this group consistently to develop a better understanding of air quality and further explore if and how air quality information can be disseminated by them along with the other health messages and awareness that they deliver.