'Toolkit essential to raise awareness about campaigns'
New delhi: The arrest of 21-year-old environment activist Disha Ravi has come as a shock to her peers and those who have worked with her. Many environmental activists have averred that the use of toolkit is a necessary part to raise awareness and have been used by environment organisations for the same purpose.
Speaking to Millennium Post, 18-year-old environment activist Niharika Mehra, who is also associated with Fridays for Future and has worked with Disha said, "I have known Disha for a long time. I have attended Zoom calls with her and it is heartbreaking to see what is happening. My parents are so scared and have asked me to stop posting stuff online and leave environment activism. This is just heartbreaking for me and many others."
Mehra said that as a young environment activist, she was inspired by Disha to speak about important issues that mattered. "Disha was someone with whom I could relate to. I was moved by her journey. Although we talked on Zoom calls, it never felt as if she was not my friend. But I know one thing for sure that Disha would emerge stronger than ever after this," she added.
Meanwhile, the use of toolkits, as explained by many environmental activists, is basic to raise awareness about a campaign.
Malaika Mathew Chawla, a 23-year-old environment activist based in Goa explained the use of toolkit and said, "Using and sharing digital toolkit is the basic part of every digital campaign. Many social justice campaigns are now digital in nature because of the pandemic and twitter being such a powerful platform. Using a toolkit is used to explain issues — like the social media kit gives you a summary of calls for actions like sign the petition or tweet this. These are just ways to show your dissent and raise your voice in different forms."
She further said that whatever Disha is going through right now could have happened to any of them. "This is extremely scary and of course we have been reading about arrests of young people in India since a few years now. I have also shown solidarity to farmers and am very open about save forest movements among others, many of us have done the same thing and it could have been any of us. It is definitely scary but I know that now more than ever, solidarity and collaboration between the youth, environment and climate groups is required on an urgent basis. I think now these environment movements are just going to get stronger," she said.
The Delhi Police has identified the creators and editors of the toolkit document which was created to gain traction on the social media for the farmers' protests but has now been linked to the violence that took place during the January 26 tractor rally.
