On a key mission

“Each person can add to a larger mission through common goals”

Kalpana Ramesh is a woman who wears many hats with panache. She is an interior architect, who is a water conservation activist of the ‘Live the Lakes’ initiative in Hyderabad. She is also a popular speaker, who wowed the audience at the recent TED X talk at MITID Pune

As part of “Live the Lakes” program, Kalpana and her team create awareness about the importance of lakes and aim for civic responsibility and local interaction with an aim towards returning the lakes to their former glory. She works with school children and Hyderabadis to spread awareness of water conservation and rainwater harvesting in schools, residential complexes, and the community at large. In just one month last summer, Kalpana got two hundred families to revive their defunct bore wells through a simple rain harvesting technique. She practises water conservation in her own home. Kalpana then decided to speak up for the lakes, educating the common citizens.

Her initiative soon took the form of the Live the Lakes program. Kalpana says, “Hyderabad is a city that is blessed with lakes, but most of them are dying a slow death due to pollution and contamination.” With the support of NGOs, Government offices, conservationists, architects, students, volunteers, professors and the general public, Kalpana hopes to revive 62 lakes around Serilingampally. She has roped in volunteers and says that it is important to involve the communities near the lakes and help them to adopt them.

She says that she decided to speak up for the lakes by educating the common citizens. She explains to the residents living around the lake that because of sewage and plastic being dumped indiscriminately, groundwater is getting contaminated. Kalpana says it’s all about, “Empowering slum communities to adopt cleanliness on lake edges for their safety and public health. Providing waste bins and setting right their garbage pick ups , working on their overflowing/ collapsed drain networks in their colonies and basic amenities so the members of the lakeside communities will in turn comeback and work for the lake that they live near.”

Kalpana is an avid terrace gardener and organic vegetable grower, Vedanta student, and above all a passionate water conservationist. She thrives on challenges, the more difficult the better! Her aim is to conduct clean-up, awareness and plantation drives. She has engaged a group of planners and architect researchers to come up with what she calls “a holistic development plan for the lakes, including cheaper and efficient methods of sewage treatment through including cheaper and efficient methods of sewage treatment through natural and organic methods and send this treated water to the lake.”

Also,during festivals that involve idol-immersion, most lakes are choked with Plaster of Paris idols. Colours and chemicals contaminate the lake. Kalpana came up with ‘Plant a Ganesh Idol’ campaign whereby idols made of clay were widely distributed. These were unique in that it would give rise to a small sapling. The idol is called a Tree Ganesh and has now become very popular. Over a lakh people pledged to “Plant a Ganesha” at several places. The Telangana Minister K.T. Rama Rao himself presided over a large event to an audience of schools and resident welfare associations, propagating the Eco-Friendly Ganesha.

What is most creditable is that Kalpana feels that she has never really faced any bias during her activism and work just because of her gender. Kalpana’s positive stand also ensures that she derives immense satisfaction from community service. She says, “I believe, pure service is pure fulfilment. I am just evolving more meaningfully, as a person. Instead of leading a selfish life, absorbed in my own world, volunteering and being rooted to a cause makes me feel like I am thinking and working towards larger responsibilities.”

In her 40s, Kalpana says that she tended to focus on her home and family duties until her children had grown up and gone to college. She only got actively involved in Social Work after that. Kalpana’s advice to socially conscious people is: “Once you take up any social work, persevere and be true to the cause, don’t give up. Always keep learning something different. Spread your wings and grow. It is good to challenge yourself; you will be surprised by what your true potential is.”

Beyniaz Edulji